The US government is coming under increasing pressure from its own companies to sign up to the Kyoto protocol on climate change, EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstroem said Wednesday.
"Slowly but steadily things are also changing in the US," she told reporters. "It is coming from the bottom up. There are also big American companies or multinational companies (which) look to Europe.
"They understand that they will have to do something about greenhouse (gas) emissions and climate change. There is a completely different scenario and political understanding of this problem," the Swedish official said.
US President George W. Bush, in one of his first acts on taking office, turned his back on the Kyoto protocol in March 2001 arguing the commitments it enforced on industrialised nations would be too costly for the US economy.
After the US withdrawal, Russia now holds the agreement's future in its hands under its complex ratification arithmetic.
Under the protocol, countries are supposed to slash their emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in a bid to stop the warming of the earth's atmosphere.
In February the US Defence Department downplayed a report on climate change that it had commissioned that warned that abrupt climate change "could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy" as countries war over dwindling resources.
Wallstroem said: "But from the administration of course we have no other signals... But ultimately, they will have to and especially if a majority of countries around the world will actually ratify the Kyoto protocol".
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