US plays down expectations for Hawaii meeting

Representatives of the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluting countries are to meet in Hawaii this week for the second meeting in President Bush's controversial series of talks on how to tackle climate change. However, scepiticism remains about the level of progress that will be achieved at the talks.

The US-hosted meetings, which are running parallel to the UN's attempts to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, have been widely criticised by environmentalists as a diversionary tactic intended to undermine the UN process and promote the Bush administration's view that global warming can be addressed through voluntary measures.

The first meeting in Washington saw the announcement of a new international clean technology fund, but left EU officials frustrated at the US' refusal to countenance legally binding emission reduction targets and alternative approaches to cutting carbon such as emission trading. Frustrations that were repeated two months later at the UN's Bali conference where US negotiators again opposed proposals for more stringent action on climate change.

The Hawaii meeting, which will feature officials from the world's 16 biggest polluters as well as the EU and UN, is expected to provide more details in the clean technology fund announced last year and is also reportedly set to discuss joint US and EU plans to broker an agreement to axe trade tariffs on green technologies and services.

However, even US officials were downplaying expectations of any major breakthrough in negotiations.

According to Reuters reports James Connaughton, the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told reporters last week that any formal agreement was highly unlikely. "I think these will be iterative discussions, which the initial goal will be to lay out a variety of options without holding any country to a particular proposal," he said. "We're trying to do this in a collaborative way, rather than in the more classic "You bring your number, I bring my number, and we start kicking them around"."

In related news, the US Department of Energy is expected to announce plans to make Hawaii the US' first state to generate the bulk of its power from renewable sources.

The joint multi-billion dollar federal and state initiative aims to make Hawaii a model low carbon economy that can be replicated across the US.