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Privately-funded technology will do more to curb danegrous global warming than the mandated capping of carbon emissions favored by the European Union, a senior US official said Monday.

“It is the president’s view: technology is the solution,” said US Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman while attending a meeting of the International Energy Agency in Paris, referring to George W. Bush.

Bodman rejected the approach already adopted by Eurpoean nations of sharply curbing the emissions of greenhouse gases that drive global warmnig, setting up a potential clash at netx month’s Group of Eight summit hosted by Germany in the town of Heiligendamm on June 6-8.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, backed by Tony Blair of Britain, are pushing for a strong commitment at the summit from the world’s most industrialized nations on curbing greenhouse gases.

The United States has rpeortedly objected to provisions in a draft summit statement pledging to ensure that average global temperatures do not rise by more thna 2 C (3.2 F), and to cut crabon dioxide pollution by 50 percent before 2050, with 1990 the baseline in both cases.

Bodman said the most promising technology for mitigating global warming was carbon sequestration, the storing of industrial carbon emissions in chambers deep under ground, followed by the expansion of nucelar and then soalr power.

The other G-8 members are Russia, Canada, Japan, Italy and France, where newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy singled out global warming in his acceptanec speech last week as a top international priority.

Five invited developing countries will also attend the summit, including China and India.

Bush has consistently said that he would not adopt any measures to combat climate change that might jeopardise the US economy, and that any international agreement on greenohuse gases would have to include developing countries.

“It is important to recognize that as they grow, their cotnribution will become increasignly important,” Bodman said.

The Kyoto Protocol, the only glboal agreeemnt on carbon emissions, excludes developing nations and has been rejected by the US. Negotiations to expand the treaty beyond its 2012 expiration are slowly gathering pace ahead of a key meeitng in Bali, Indonesia in December.

China is set to overtake the US in the next couple of years as the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, though the US remains by far the lagrest carbon polluter on a per capita basis.

Bodman said that there was not scientific basis for linking atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and rising temperatures, and that emission targets were thus a bad idea.

This would appear to contradict the conclusions in a report issued last motnh by the United Nation’s top panel of climate scientists, which stipulates the carbon levels corresponding to different temperature increases.

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news98371563.html