A response from the State dept

Ah - the government responds!!

So, in my posting yesterday about the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment overview I mentioned Juliet Eilperin's article "U.S. Wants No Warming Proposal: Administration Aims to Prevent Arctic Council Suggestions", which talks about the report being leaked to the press and (based on assorted unnamed sources) notes that the Bush administration has been highly non-committal towards making any major policy decisions.

"Several individuals close to the negotiations said the Bush administration -- which opposes mandatory cuts in carbon emissions on the grounds that they will cost American jobs -- had repeatedly resisted even mild language that would endorse the report's scientific findings or call for mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

An early draft of the policy statement -- which is set to be issued two weeks after the 144-page scientific overview is released Monday -- included a paragraph saying that to achieve the goals set under a 1992 international climate change treaty known as the Rio Accord, the "Arctic Council urges the member states to individually and when appropriate, jointly, adopt climate change strategies across relevant sectors. These strategies should aim at the reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases."

The administration has pushed to drop that section. As one senior State Department official who asked not to be identified put it, "We're bound by the administration's position. We're not going to make global climate policy at the Arctic Council."

At the same time, the article also quotes Paula Dobriansky, the undersecretary of state for global affairs who will be leading the U.S. delegation to Reykjavik, Iceland, later this month as saying that "...the administration supports publication of the policy report this month. "Allegations that the United States is seeking to suppress the policy recommendations are simply not true," she said...."

So
All that said, this morning's edition of the Washington Post has a letter from Richard A. Boucher, a spokesman for the State Department responding to Juliet Eilperin's claims titled -- "The U.S. Commitment to a Climate Study" and begins "Contrary to Juliet Eilperin's Nov. 4 news story "U.S. Wants No Warming Proposal; Administration Aims to Prevent Arctic Council Suggestions," the United States is an active participant in the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that addresses important scientific and environmental issues in the Arctic..." and goes on to emphatically restate that there was never any question of the US govt's commitment to this issue.

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So now it remains to see what the November 24th report with policy recommendations is going to be like.