Recent weeks have seen important developments on both sides of the Atlantic for the policy pursued in combating climate change. In Europe, the council of environment ministers concluded a formal political agreement on 4 March on the decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol before 1 June this year. With this major decision, the European Union is opening the door to the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol for climate protection just in time for the world summit on sustainable development to be held in August 2002 in Johannesburg. In the United States, on 14 February President Bush presented the US national climate protection program. 
	
	
 It should be remembered that after Bush described the Kyoto Protocol as "fundamentally flawed" international negotiations on climate protection almost collapsed. The United States, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (25 percent of global emissions) withdrew from an international agreement that, for the first time, set binding targets for developed countries for climate protection. We now know that the US withdrawal did not stop the world community from deepening this important multilateral agreement for combating climate change. The European Union played a dominant role in these negotiations and the community of states concluded, at the Bonn and Marrakech conferences of July and October last year, an agreement that sets out how to implement the Kyoto Protocol and provides for an original mechanism for respecting the reduction obligations that could possibly serve as a model for other agreements and that suggests a possible strengthening of international institutional structures in the environmental field. This must now be ratified by all the parties and will shortly enter into force. However, all the parties repeated with insistence that world climate protection cannot be effective unless the United States takes measures that are comparable to these taken by Europe and Japan. 
	
	
 Unfortunately, the recent US climate protection program falls far short of meeting such expectations. Although there is a certain satisfaction at seeing President Bush recognize the need to fight climate change, that must not in any way conceal the extreme weakness of what he announced. Under the US program, US emissions as a proportion of GDP must fall by 18 percent between 2002 and 2012, or in other words energy efficiency must increase by 18 percent. This can hardly be described as ambitious as a 15 percent increase in energy efficiency was in any event expected given present productivity levels. In addition, if the US economy continues to grow, the increased energy efficiency will be cancelled out or more than cancelled out. With an annual economic growth objective of 3 percent, absolute US emissions in 2012 will be 24.5 percent more than 1990 levels, despite the improvement in energy efficiency. By comparison, respect for the Kyoto Protocol requires the EU to reduce its emissions by 8 percent compared with 1990, Japan by 6 percent, and the United States by 7 percent, a figure accepted by President Clinton in 1997. 
	
	
 The warnings by climate experts went unheeded in the US climate protection program. In its last report, the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] called for rapid and decisive action to at least avert the most serious consequences of climate change. Scientists estimate that the industrialized countries must reduce their emissions to around 70 percent by 2020 to maintain climate change at an acceptable level. Researchers have shown that without a determined policy on climate coordinated at international level the consequences of climate change will be dramatic. The average global temperature will increase by 5.8d C by 2100, sea levels will rise by up to 90 cm over the same period, and there will be an increasing number of hurricanes with ever more serious consequences, while man and nature will have to cope with a shift in climate and rainfall zones the like of which has never been seen before. 
	
	
 At our instigation, on 4 March EU environment ministers therefore called on the United States to "assume its responsibilities under the framework agreement on climate change," that is to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels and strengthen domestic actions to bring them into line with the level of effort accepted by the industrial countries in application of the Kyoto Protocol. 
	
	
 If the effects of climate change were not so devastating and our action were to be guided by economic competition, we Europeans could welcome the fact that the United States is not committing itself to an ambitious climate protection program, in so far as the technologies in the field of energy efficiency and renewable energy are the technologies of the future. Anybody who fails to exploit these markets from the outset will remain lagging behind. Demand for these technologies is increasing worldwide. The "three liters for 100 kilometers" car, high efficiency turbines, and solar panels are export successes and their development is driven by a climate protection policy of growing amplitude. Even today it is difficult to find buyers outside the United States for the fuel-guzzling cars of the US automobile industry. 
	
	
 US reticence is not therefore a reason for us to reduce our climate protection efforts. The dominant role of the European climate protection policy has benefits for our economy. Many studies show that an active policy of climate protection is not in any way contrary to a policy of full employment. On the contrary, it can have a positive effect. By implementing our European and national climate protection programs we will succeed in creating several hundred thousand new jobs by 2010. 
	
	
 We hope that the United States will come to realize that an active climate protection policy is not only necessary for environmental policy but is also an excellent opportunity to modernize industrial society. The Kyoto Protocol is a first major step. It should therefore be implemented as quickly as possible and extended beyond the initial period of 2008-2012. The return of the United States to the system must remain our goal. The door remains wide open for the United States to return to the Kyoto process: The biggest emitter of greenhouse gases cannot be relieved of its responsibilities for global climate protection.