July 13, 2001 (UPI) -- The Kyoto Protocol conference of 180 nations in Bonn next week seems unlikely to produce a conclusive result as U.S. positions on a number of key issues surrounding greenhouse gas emissions are diametrically opposed to those of almost all countries.

Japan, holding key swing votes, appears unwilling at present to break with the U.S. refusal to sign on and in fact shares a number of the same concerns.

Both Japan and the United States want much greater credit for carbon dioxide absorption by their forests than European Union countries are currently willing to give them. Japan and the United States also want the creation of an unlimited market in emissions trading. The EU countries want strict limits on how much greenhouse gas emissions can be offset by emissions trading and carbon absorption.

The Kyoto process, designed to begin to rein in carbon dioxide emissions widely believed to be driving global warming, has about another year to produce a definitive document before the negotiation timetable falls behind schedule.

Kohei Saito, a press officer at the Japanese Embassy in Washington, told United Press International: "The Japanese position is that the United States should participate in the Kyoto Protocol because without the participation of the United States, the Kyoto Protocol itself is not so effective for solving the problems. The Japanese government is trying to persuade the United States to participate in the Kyoto Protocol. We still have the hope that the United States would participate."

But when asked what if the United States does not participate, Saito would only say, "We have the hope, we have the hope." Saito told UPI that there is no official Japanese position as to what Japan will do if the U.S. does not participate.

There is strong support in the Japanese parliament for the Kyoto Protocol, according to Saito, but it would need to be introduced by Japan's Prime Minister. Japanese government officials have consistently repeated that they favor the protocol.

A meeting Friday in Washington that included U.S. and Japanese environmental officials, as well as officials from the State Department, was called "constructive" by a White House spokesperson, although it is not known whether specifics of the Kyoto Protocol were discussed.

The parties agreed to focus on science issues and to work together on computer modeling, market mechanisms and capital building in developing countries. The group is scheduled to meet again in September.

"The focus of the meeting was to determine how we can work together to address the issue of climate change, something that the United States and the president are committed to play a leadership role in," the spokesperson said. "The meeting was constructive in advancing how we can work together with Japanese on this important issue."

The structure of the Kyoto Protocol requires that countries with 55 percent of the developed world's carbon dioxide emissions must vote to ratify for it to go into force. Japan's votes have become crucial because of the U.S. refusal.

Maintaining good relations with the United States is important to Japan and the U.S. is Japan's largest trading partner at than $200 billion a year. China is the next closest, with about $60 billion a year in trading with the island nation.

There still is quite a bit of room for horse trading and very little appears to be written in stone. A few weeks ago, Jan Pronk, the Netherlands' environment minister who chairs the Kyoto process, suddenly offered Japan a significant increase in the credits it would get for growing trees.

From the Bush administration point of view, this was perhaps a poor choice of an area with which to attempt to influence the Japanese, because the United States has consistently wanted fuller credit for its forests and grasslands.

Under the Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed and ratified by the United States in 1992 which formed the basis for Kyoto, countries can offset their emissions with their forests and grasslands. Additionally, countries are allowed to purchase unused emissions from other nations that do not emit as much greenhouse gas as allowed under their Kyoto quota caps.

Some economists point out the value of these unused emissions quotas could easily rise into the tens of billions of dollars, making the negotiations around how large a country's quota should be somewhat akin to negotiating free quotas of insider stock at an initial public offering.

Bonn is likely to be a spirited two weeks because the U.S. positions are in stark contrast to those held by most of the world.

The U.S. position, explained in a cabinet-level analysis of the protocol, is that the agreement is "fundamentally flawed." The protocol fails to set a long-term goal based on science, excludes developing countries, sets unrealistic targets for the United States, would harm U.S. and global economies and leaves the America "dangerously dependent" on other countries in the proposed carbon dioxide emissions trading scheme, the White House analysis said

Critics of the Bush administration Kyoto policy dispute all of these points.

The cabinet group's Climate Change Review report, said, in a two-page section titled, "An Analysis of the Kyoto Protocol," that "The Kyoto Protocol fails to establish a long-term goal based on science . . . "

But according to many people familiar with the protocol, it was not designed as a comprehensive answer to the problem of global warming.

Anders Jessen, counselor for the delegation of the European Commission to the United States on the issues of transportation, energy and the environment, told United Press International: "The Kyoto Protocol was never intended to set long-term goals. It was seen as a first step, a framework if you will, for building agreement on future steps that would bring us ultimately to stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that would not be dangerous."

One supporter of the White House position, Chris Horner, a counselor at the Cooler Heads Coalition, told UPI: "The essential question of the Rio meeting, what concentrations of greenhouse gases constitute dangerous interference with the climate system, has not been answered. If you have the answer you know where you want to go. If you don't have an answer you're just getting into the car and possibly driving off the cliff."

The White House report said: "The Kyoto Protocol is ineffective in addressing climate change because it excludes developing countries." But the very widely held view by supporters is that it was understood from the beginning of climate talks that the developing countries would join in at a later time.

"The idea has never been that they should remain without quantified targets," Jessen said. "The idea was to bring them in at a later stage, either under the second or third commitment periods with quantified targets. But the agreement struck and the compromise struck in Rio (in 1992) was that the industrialized world has been responsible for the majority of the historical emissions, that we're more capable of handling the problem and that we should be the first movers."

Horner told UPI: "Well, the U.S. can come on later, too. Our Senate has rejected the approach that the U.S. should go first."

In 1997 the Senate passed, 95 to 0, a non-binding resolution, that the United States should not sign any international climate agreement that did not require "specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for developing country parties within the same compliance period," as for the developed countries.

Horner said the developing world's industrial processes are far dirtier, in terms of carbon dioxide, than the developed world and this would be the logical place to start to reduce emissions.

Arguments continue to be made by both sides about cumulative versus current emissions. Most of the greenhouse gases now cumulatively in the atmosphere are from the developed world. Emissions from developing countries, with 80 percent of the world's population, are increasing rapidly from growing industrial activities and from burning forests to create agricultural land.

The administration and its critics clash over which economic reports to read. Some see little or no economic impact from joining Kyoto, others predict a 1 percent to 2 percent drop in gross domestic product by 2010 if there is no emissions trading -- viewed by most as an extremely unlikely scenario.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.