Top EU Environmental Official Rips US, Australian Rejection of Kyoto Protocol [ 12 out of 15 Eu countries fail their Kyoto target -- Oz meets its target --- this is a classic case of pots calling a kettle black ..what bleedin' hypocrites !!??!]
By VOA News 02 April 2007

EU Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas speaking during 8th Plenary session of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Brussels, 02 Apr 2007

The European Union's top environmental official has strongly criticized the United States and Australia, for rejecting a global treaty on reducing carbon emissions.

European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas accused Washington of maintaining a "negative attitude" on environmental cooperation, and said he cannot understand Australia's move to reject the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Dimas' comments came at the start of a four-day United Nations-sponsored meeting in Brussels of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - a network of more than 2,000 experts on global warming.

The grouping is tasked with summarizing a massive report that predicts dire consequences from global warming. It also seeks to determine whether humans can do anything to prevent it.

The closed-door meetings are expected to produce agreement on a draft U.N. study that predicts increasing global poverty and a scarcity of drinking water in much of the world by mid-century. It also predicts melting glaciers, rising sea levels and a host of vanishing species, unless emissions from heat-trapping gases are curbed.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.