Members of the Association of State Green Parties strongly condemn the performance of the U.S. delegation at the Sixth Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change, which resulted in a breakdown of negotiations. The delegation refused to agree on steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, claiming that “carbon sinks” would reduce the dangerous and growing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, absolving the U.S. of responsibility to enact more effective measures against the threat of catastrophic changes in the earth’s climate.

Disregarding urgent recommendations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced 60-80 percent to stabilize our disrupted climate, the U.S. has failed to commit even to minimal steps to decrease the rate of fossil fuel burning. Instead, the U.S. has increased its greenhouse gas emissions 13 percent over the past decade, and plans to allow further increases.

This record, compounded by the failure of the U.S. to cooperate in the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol – the goal of the Hague conference – reflects poorly on the Clinton Administration, and calls into question Vice President Al Gore’s commitment to the environment at a time when the election stalemate in Florida places him under extra scrutiny.

Progressives in the Democratic Party and organizations like the Sierra Club supported Mr. Gore in the 2000 election, citing his commitment to the environment and the threat of a patently anti-environmental Bush Administration, and have blasted Green Party candidate Ralph Nader for “spoiling” the election and for suggesting that the two leading candidates are nearly the same on many key issues.

But the actions of the U.S. delegation, reflecting Clinton-Gore policy, are consistent with the Administration’s increases in road construction, failure to push for fuel emission standards, compromises on logging, support for bio-engineering, enthusiasm for international “free trade” pacts that override national and local environmental and labor protections, and – significant in the context of the ballot wrangling in Florida – refusal to push for a clean-up bill to stop sugar plantation run-off poisoning the Everglades.

In other words, Americans concerned about the environment who voted for Mr. Gore – rather than help the Green Party grow into a strong political force – wasted their votes. Neither George W. Bush and the Republican Party nor Al Gore and the Democratic Party will provide leadership on the global warming crisis. Neither will make an effort to educate the American public about the urgent need to reduce consumption of fossil fuels and undertake a massive conversion to renewable energy sources.

Despite the unanimous agreement among the 2,000 scientists appointed by the UN to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, both major parties remain under the spell of the oil, nuclear, and logging industries and other corporate lobbies and their paid scientists.

Their influence made sure that emission cuts, energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, sustainable economic policies, and equity among all nations were never on the table during the closed-door talks in the Hague. Transnational corporate lobbies also swayed delegations from Southern nations with promises of development.

Instead, the emphasis was on forest and plantation projects (the carbon sinks), promoted by NGOs as well as business representatives, in which many delegations found an excuse to avoid more effective measures.

Since the American per capita consumption of energy is about five times the global average, and the U.S. produces a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions (with per capita levels three times those of France, as President Chirac noted), the U.S. has a special obligation to help avert what will be ecological disaster in a few generations, as coastal cities face flooding, food supplies are threatened, skin cancer becomes epidemic, and extremes of temperature and weather conditions cause death and damage throughout the world.

Greenhouse pollution by industrial nations, especially the U.S., represents the world’s most urgent environmental justice issue, since developing nations are at greatest risk of crippling storms caused by global warming. In recent years, African nations have suffered under devastating droughts, while terrible floods have afflicted nations in Central America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. These disasters are consistent with global warming predictions.

Speaking of the breakdown in The Hague, French environment minister and Green Party member Dominique Voynet said, “The real failure would have been to have given in [to the U.S. demands for compromise], to have fallen back on an apparent display of principle, or to have signed up to a bad deal for the climate. We constantly refused to do any of that because we didn’t come here just for show or to undo the convention signed at Kyoto.”

The U.S. delegation’s role in the breakdown in the Hague conference proves how sorely the U.S. needs a political party that refuses corporate contributions and resists privatization and other “free market” assaults on human needs and freedoms and the health of the planet. The Green Party has emerged as America’s third party, and as our last hope for environmental justice and sustainable and fair economic policy.

Nancy Allen of Brooksville is a member of the Green Party.