AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Democracy Now!, Free Speech Radio. I’m Amy Goodman.

Well, the European Parliament today is set to condemn the United States’ withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol on global warming as appalling and provocative and threatening climate disaster. Just a week ago, President Bush reversed a campaign pledge and announced that the U.S. would not abide by the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty on global warming that over a hundred countries signed in Japan, of 1997.

Countries around the world reacted with outrage. In fact, here in the United States, a European delegation came to the United States to — environmental commissioner said the U.S. should be reduced to the role of a spectator at future environmental meetings and that the 15-nation EU, European Union, would now lead the process to finalize the terms of the Kyoto treaty with other countries. A delegation left for its own talks in Washington on the Kyoto Protocol, with the Japanese environment minister lobbying her counterparts from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway. The five ministers agreed in a telephone conference jointly to urge the U.S. to reconsider its decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol.

We are going to go first to Roda Verheyen, who is with Friends of the Earth Europe, the climate change campaigner for that group. She speaks to us from Hamburg.

Welcome to Democracy Now! What’s been your response to President Bush’s reversal?

RODA VERHEYEN: Hi, Amy. Thank you for putting me on the program.

Well, our response from Europe is basically giving a voice to the outrage that you just described. And what we’ve launched on March the 30th, which is the day when Bush announced his decision to pull out of the treaty, is a email campaign, a massive email campaign, which we called “Flood Bush.” And we are now receiving about 10,000 emails per day, which are all going to the White House server. And it gives people the opportunity to raise their concerns with President Bush, to protest against the decision of the United States, the major polluter with greenhouse gases in the world, to pull out of this global agreement. And up to now we have about 70,000 people around the world writing to the president about their disappointment and outrage about this decision. So that’s what we’ve done. And we’ll continue with this campaign until, hopefully, the United States will see the light, or the president will see the light, and come back to the negotiation table. Otherwise, what we’re doing is we’re urging the EU and its partners in New Zealand, Canada, Japan, etc., to go ahead alone, without the U.S. And we’re urging the U.S. to stay at home. If they don’t want to negotiate about the Kyoto Protocol, stay at home in July. Do not come to Bonn. And let the other nations get on with it.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you say you crashed the White House computer server with all the emails?

RODA VERHEYEN: Yes. We’ve had reports that we crashed the White House computer server twice. Those have not been confirmed, obviously. But we’re pretty certain that that is very possible, because of the fact that computer systems like that only have a limited capacity for emails per second. And there were peak times where the server received about a thousand emails per second.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined on the telephone by Steve Sawyer, who’s the climate campaigner for Greenpeace International in Amsterdam. Can you talk about reactions from different countries, Steve Sawyer?

STEVE SAWYER: Yeah, well, we’ve been flooded with responses from — as Roda said, from Japan; Canada; from church organizations; from the opposition in Australia, which is likely to enter into government soon; of course, from the European Union; from people around the South Pacific; from the European Parliament itself; and the Green Group, which last week called for a boycott of American oil companies; from Brazil; and indeed from New Zealand.

Today we’re launching an initiative — Greenpeace is launching an initiative calling upon the top 100 U.S. companies to declare their positions on climate change, whether or not they support the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, or whether they support President Bush. And we’re giving them a week to reply, because the American people can register their opinions at the ballot box, but for the rest of the world, who are all shocked at what President Bush has done, we can register our opinions via the marketplace. And from the mail and phone calls that we’ve been receiving, it’s clear that the public wants to do just that. And we want to make sure they make the right choices.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, explain for a minute. The U.S. Senate probably would not have ratified the Kyoto treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, is that right? So, what exactly has Bush done, except sort of adamantly proclaim that?

STEVE SAWYER: Well, the U.S. Senate under Bill Clinton certainly would not have, and they made that clear in 1995. But several things have — in 1997, rather. Several things have changed since then. One, there’s been an election. And there’s a lot more pro-environmental senators in place now than there were at that time. There are important elections coming up in a couple of — well, only about 18 months now, where we expect both the House and the Senate to change even further in direction in response to the growing public outcry. I mean, we’ve seen the Time/CNN poll over the weekend that fully two-thirds of American people want to see some action on climate change. That just wasn’t the case four years ago, and we only expect that those numbers would increase.

RODA VERHEYEN: Yeah, I can only agree with that. I mean, our partner organization in the U.S., Friends of the Earth U.S., has done a lot of grassroots work on this issue. And what we see is an increasingly aware public in the United States that want action. We see a lot of companies in the U.S. that actually do want to participate in this global climate change regime and who are also outraged by this decision. And that’s why we were hopeful, and we remain to be hopeful, that the U.S. Senate will ratify this protocol at some point. And that’s why Bush’s decision to pull out of the negotiations and to not even — you know, to basically declare this treaty dead, which is something that he can’t do, is so outrageous.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain for a minute — we should back up. When we talk about the Kyoto Protocol in this country, there isn’t a lot of attention to it, so I don’t know if people are very clear on exactly what the — what exactly it says.

RODA VERHEYEN: Well, what the Kyoto Protocol does is, basically, it sets a timetable for nations around the world, industrialized nations, such as the U.S., Canada, Australia and the whole of the EU and other countries, to reduce their emissions from greenhouse gases, which is mainly carbon dioxide, but also methane and other gases. And it sets percentage points, leveled against the 1990 emissions of those countries, and it obliges them to reduce those greenhouse gas emissions to protect the global climate. And if the U.S. pulls out of this treaty now, it has no obligation to reduce these greenhouse gases and basically jeopardizes the future of the entire planet with that decision.

STEVE SAWYER: And we should also remember that President Bush’s father signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change, of which the Kyoto Protocol is a subsidiary agreement, signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. And the U.S. Senate has ratified that agreement, even though it has not taken up the Kyoto Protocol. And under the Framework Convention, they are obliged to reduce greenhouse gases to prevent dangerous climate change. And the Kyoto Protocol is only the first step in what needs to be done. I mean, scientists agree that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse gas emissions by 50, 60, 70 or 80% over the course of the next half a century.

AMY GOODMAN: Steve Sawyer, you’re with Greenpeace. Can you briefly describe what’s happening off the coast of Scotland right now with the Greenpeace occupation of the Conoco oil rig, why they’re doing it? What’s happening?

STEVE SAWYER: We have been opposing the expansion of the oil industry in all parts of the world for five, six years now, simply because we need to, as a society, move away from a dependence on fossil fuels. And as a famous British politician once said, when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. The planet cannot afford to burn the oil that we’ve already discovered and that we already have in reserves. So, the hundreds of millions, and even billions, of dollars spent on new exploration is money that will ultimately be wasted and would be much better spent in terms — in developing the technologies and the infrastructure needed for the energy transition that is going to come.

AMY GOODMAN: Lastly, you talk about this letter that’s just being released to the press today, the letter to U.S. corporations, so it’s a little ironic that you’d have the U.S. corporations putting pressure on Bush to endorse the Kyoto treaty and to go back to his campaign pledge. You have shareholder resolutions around the country over the last few years forcing these corporations to pull out of the global climate change coalition that was fighting Kyoto, and a number of the companies did. Do you really think there will be a force to pressure Bush the other way now?

STEVE SAWYER: Well, we hope to make them nail their colors to the mast, so to speak. Obviously, we don’t expect Exxon and Mobil and Texaco and Chevron to do a turn on this overnight, but we didn’t expect BP and Shell and Total Fina Elf and other companies to do that a few years ago. But eventually, you know, they rely on the people who buy their gasoline and buy their products. And if those people can speak with a strong enough voice, yes, eventually they will change.

AMY GOODMAN: Roda Verheyen, we have just 30 seconds. What are you encouraging people to do in the United States?

RODA VERHEYEN: I think people should voice their concern with the president and, at all opportunities, with Republican senators that they can get a hold of, and write letters, write emails, and try and get a hold of the press and the media. Basically, give a voice to their concerns. Climate change will affect us all. It will affect our children. It will kill millions of people if we don’t put a stop to it. And that’s the duty of the American president now, and not later.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your website at Friends of the Earth?

RODA VERHEYEN: It’s www.FriendsOfTheEarthEurope.FOEEurope.org.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Steve Sawyer, Greenpeace’s?

STEVE SAWYER: www.greenpeace.org.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, Steve Sawyer in Amsterdam for Greenpeace and Roda Verheyen for Friends of the Earth, speaking to us from Hamburg.

And that does it for today’s show. Tomorrow we’re going to be talking about horse meat, the increased demand for horse meat in the United States and Europe. If you’d like to order a cassette copy the show, 1-800-735-0230 is the number to call. Our email addresses mail@democracynow.org. That’s mail@democracynow.org. Our producers are Kris Abrams and Terry Allen. Our engineer is Anthony Sloan. Our technical director is Errol Maitland. From the embattled studios of WBAI, from the studios of the banned and the fired, from the studios of you, our listeners, I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!