US Says its Ozone Bid Beats Kyoto on Climate Change

BRUSSELS - A U.S. proposal to hasten the phase-out of gases that damage the ozone layer will be twice as effective as the Kyoto Protocol in fighting climate change, a top adviser to President George W. Bush said on Friday.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the United States would propose that deadlines for phasing out HCFC gases, used in fridges and air conditioners, be moved forward by 10 years.

"We're going to propose to significantly shorten the timeline ... both because we can get the ozone benefits and because these are very strong greenhouse gases," he told Reuters in an interview.

"It would produce at least two times the reductions (in greenhouse gases) than the Kyoto Protocol."

Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing the treaty would cost U.S. jobs and that it wrongly excluded poorer, developing nations from emissions-reduction targets.

The HCFCs proposal will come at a meeting of roughly 190 governments in Montreal next week. Washington seeks to move the phase-out deadline for developed countries to 2020 from 2030 and to 2030 from 2040 for developing nations.

The talks precede a United Nations climate change meeting in New York later this month, followed by a conference in Washington of major economic powers called by Bush to pursue an agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol, which goes through 2012.

Bush planned to address the Washington meeting and would also attend a dinner hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York to discuss global warming with other world leaders on Sept. 24, Connaughton said.

Connaughton, who was touring EU capitals to prepare for the conference, said the United States could not accept a system for trading rights to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) like the one established by the European Union and allowed under Kyoto.

"The design of the global cap and trade system has proven to be horribly flawed," he said.

"The whole structure does not contain the incentive system that cap and trade is intended to create."

He said the Washington meeting would seek "nationally defined" strategies for fighting global warming, including binding and non-binding measures.

"We would like to find consensus on a long-term global goal for reducing emissions," he said.

He said EU plans to add domestic and international airlines to its emissions trading scheme -- opposed by the United States and other nations -- would violate World Trade Organisation rules. "This battle is over before it begins," he said.

The European Union has set a target for itself to cut greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, bumping that up to 30 percent if other nations agreed a global cut.