US on track with greenhouse goals, but too easy?

OSLO, Sep 30 (Reuters) Washington is sticking to goals for curbing greenhouse gases under a yardstick shunned by most of its allies as too easy.

President George W Bush said he has no plans to toughen the targets -- trimming the amount of heat-trapping gas emitted per dollar of economic output -- despite speculation that he was considering a revision because of worries about global warming.

''We're meeting those targets,'' he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published yesterday. ''So long as we're meeting those targets,...then I think we ought to pursue the current track we're on.'' The US goal, of an 18 per cent cut in emissions per dollar of gross domestic product in the decade to 2012, is far less stringent than cuts in total emissions favoured by almost all other industrial nations under the UN's Kyoto Protocol.

Many experts say it would be hard for the United States not to achieve the goal -- meaning that Bush will not shift to tougher limits favoured by California, Arizona and seven northeastern states.

''We're on target for the status quo,'' said Vicki Arroyo, director of policy analysis at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington, saying that Bush's goal would take no effort since high oil prices are prompting efficiency.

''I don't think that the number 1 greenhouse gas emitter and richest economy in the world is setting the example needed -- it's not enough,'' she said.

ETHANOL Bush also said he would speed up a push for alternative energies such as ethanol as part of big energy investments. Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying that it would cost US jobs and wrongly excluded developing nations until 2012.

''In general terms (emissions intensity targets) are not a good idea,'' said Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

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