Brazil rejects Bush move on climate change talks

And now even Brazil say no.

As I reported yesterday, European leaders have been quick to distance themselves from Bush's new plans to create a new framework to tackle climate change outside of the United Nations, with Britain and Germany quickly making their objections known. Now, Brazil, a fast developing country whose support is critical to a global deal on emission cuts, has rejected the American proposition.

"The Brazilian position is clear cut," Mr Lula said. "I cannot accept the idea that we have to build another group to discuss the same issues that were discussed in Kyoto and not fulfilled.

"If you have a multilateral forum [the UN] that makes a democratic decision ... then we should work to abide by those rules [rather than] simply to say that I do not agree with Kyoto and that I will develop another institution," said Mr Lula, who was in London to watch Friday's England-Brazil international football friendly.

The Bush administration has sought to cultivate President Lula as an ally, seeing the former trade unionist as a centre-left alternative in Latin America to the more radical anti-American socialism espoused by Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Presidents Bush and Lula also share an enthusiasm for the potential for "bio-fuels" made from plants as a substitute for fossil fuels.

However, on overall climate change policy, President Lula was dismissive of the Bush approach, calling it "voluntarism", meaning a reliance on "coalitions of the willing" rather than establish global institutions and the pursuit of voluntary goals rather than binding commitments. "We cannot let voluntarism override multilateralism," he said.

And on this Lula is, of course, bang on the money. Bush is very keen to make any changes we make regarding climate change totally voluntary, which means that bugger all will ever be done. Bush is very keen to have us all sign up to a set of "guidelines" rather than rules, which is a very good indication of how flippant he is being when it comes to this subject.

He doesn't want to be tied down to actually having to do anything.

But Mr Lula, Brazil's president since 2003, rebuked Mr Bush for seemingly sidestepping the UN and not taking its global responsibilities seriously. "I am open-minded about talking to President Bush ... I will never refuse to discuss any idea, but we should respect the decisions made in the multilateral forums. It is the only thing we have all agreed on in a democratic way," he said. "If the US is the country that most contributes with greenhouse gases, in the world, it should assume more responsibility to reduce emissions."

So there we have it. Bush is coming to the G8 with almost everyone opposed to his great new plan. Even Brazil, with a leader that Chavez has attacked for his tendency to produce bio-fuels, has refused to join the Bush camp.

President Lula said the decisive moment in the current "Doha round" of talks would come in the next few weeks, with the G8 summit at a trade ministers' meeting due in mid-June.

"I think that this month something has to happen. If nothing happens, we will go into history as a generation of politicians that failed humanity, especially the poor," the president said. "If there is no agreement on Doha round, it's useless to talk about fighting terrorism, its useless to fight organised crime because poverty is the principal seed for the growth of terrorism."

The only more important issue in the world than trade, President Lula said, is climate change, and both are nearing a potential turning point.

"In the Doha round, I want to solve the issues of today and tomorrow," the Brazilian leader said. "On the climate issue I have to solve the problem of planet earth, the only one we know of on which we can survive ... So for God's sake, let's take care of planet earth."

Ever since Bush came into office his rejection of Kyoto has marked him as an ostrich, as someone with his head buried deep in the sand, refusing to believe in climate change until the evidence became overwhelming.

Now, whilst apparently accepting the evidence, he is seeking to avoid having to make any difficult decisions until the day he leaves office.

Thankfully, the rest of the world is much more serious about the problem than Bush is, and it looks like he is going to find very few takers for his new game of "lets circumvent the UN."

The real test of a leader is whether anyone follows, and for a long time now Bush has been marching into the desert with no-one behind him. Angela Merkel summed up the European position best when she called it "non-negotiable".

Let's see how "The Decider" approaches the G8 with almost everyone opposed to his plan. No doubt Blair will continue to see "progress" in the fact that Bush has even admitted that there is a problem, but there is no reason to believe the rest of the world will find this even remotely adequate.

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