Senator Warner from Virginia on the Environment Public Works Committee, has been working with a bunch of us, and specifically with Senator Lieberman, who is also on that committee, and we are trying to draft legislation now that will see America take a lead, hopefully in the next year or so, in setting firm targets and goals for emissions reductions. We’re currently discussing the 70 percent reduction target. We know that’s not enough, most of us, and we recognize that this will be a beginning with a Senate that doesn’t yet have the full freedom of its votes to be able to go further, and with a White House that has opposed much of this up until now.

It is a matter of record that President Bush successfully blocked the G8 nations from accepting firm emission reduction targets at the June G8 meeting, and that was when he announced his intention to host a larger summit of the world’s largest emitters. So we’re hopeful that the summit that’s coming up, the fact that more people will be present, and that the Administration has at least acknowledged global climate change in recent statements, may lead to a broader discussion that can contribute to the U.N. discussion of how do we come together around fixed goals, fixed targets, and a unified understanding of where we’re proceeding from here. And a lot of us have high hopes, obviously, that we can move that ball in these next days.

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The fact that the meeting is taking place is important. The fact that the President is going to go to this dinner in New York, and that Secretary of State, Condi Rice, is taking part in the meeting is important. And our hope is that if more nations are, in fact, prepared to be part of a global solution, that that’s going to facilitate the President and others moving from the position they’ve had up until now. So we’re very hopeful, but there’s no way to make a prediction. I don’t want to downgrade it, because we are hopeful, and we want to be positive about what might come, but I’m not going to hype a huge transition in an administration that’s obviously been very reluctant to deal with this for seven years.

I’d like to see the President of the United States take the lead, and say the United States of America is going to set fixed targets, that we’re going to lead the world in alternative renewable fuels and technologies, and we’re going to help contribute to the technical assistance and the technologies, themselves, to less developed countries in an effort to facilitate their economic transformation. I think if we were to take that kind of affirmative role, we could negotiate an agreement on this much more rapidly than many people think.

An MP3 audio clip of Senator Kerry’s part of the conference call discussion is posted in the Multimedia/Audio section of this website. A full text transcript and audio recording of the entire conference call is posted on the National Environmental Trust’s website as well.

UPDATED TO ADD:

Washington, D.C. – Sen. John Kerry issued the following statement today, after the White House announced that President Bush will skip all of this week’s United Nations climate change meetings except for a dinner Monday night.

The Bush Administration has done everything in its power to downplay, discount, and distract from the threat of climate change, so it’s not surprising that the President is skipping a series of high-level meetings designed to address the problem.

As heads of state of 80 different countries and representatives from 150 countries gather in New York to chart the global response to climate change, the President’s absence sends a clear signal that he isn’t really serious about an international emissions reduction plan.

The President needs to exhibit leadership and spend some political capital by committing to serious domestic emission reductions and rejoining the world’s leaders in a new global strategy to tackle this urgent issue.