Another person attending the G8 summit is Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In an interesting political move, he has flatly rejected President Bush’s proposals for parallel global negotiations to combat climate change, insisting that countries come to agreement at the United Nations, and not under US leadership.
“The Brazilian position is clear cut,” Mr Lula said in an interview with the Guardian newspaper. “I cannot accept the idea that we have to build another group to discuss the same issues that were discussed in Kyoto and not fulfilled.”
“If you have a multilateral forum [the UN] that makes a democratic decision … then we should work to abide by those rules [rather than] simply to say that I do not agree with Kyoto and that I will develop another institution”.
Lula continued “If the US is the country that most contributes with greenhouse gases, in the world, it should assume more responsibility to reduce emissions.”
Over to you George W…