BRASILIA - Encouraged that all major US presidential candidates vow to protect the environment, lawmakers from industrialized nations and big emerging economies met yesterday to draft policies to address global warming and rising deforestation.
Scores of legislators and officials from China to Cameroon are considering a document demanding "ambitious absolute emission reductions for developed countries" to counter climate change.
Proposals under consideration included a global carbon market in which nations would be able to trade and sell credits and sharp increases in funding for developing countries to reduce emissions.
The draft document did not explicitly name the United States - the only major industrial nation to reject the relatively modest cuts of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
But most delegates hope Washington will agree to deep and mandatory reductions in greenhouse emissions to be proposed by a 2009 UN climate conference in Copenhagen.
The delegates applauded when US Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the leading Republican and Democratic candidates for president - Senators John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama - are committed to reaching an international agreement in Copenhagen on emissions.
The 100 legislators at the two-day forum, organized by Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment, hope to build consensus on how to attack global warming, then take the ideas home to try to gather broader support.
