The Guardian newspaper reports President Bush was castigated by European diplomats on Friday and found himself isolated after a special conference on climate change ended without any progress. European ministers, diplomats and officials attending the Washington conference criticized Bush for failing again to commit to binding action on climate change. Britain and almost all other European countries want mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse emissions. President Bush is pushing for nations to voluntarily reduce emissions. Mogens Peter Carl outlined the European Commission’s vision on how to tackle the crisis.

Mogens Peter Carl: “What we have put on the table is two-fold. In the first place, an offer that we are prepared to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by the year 2020, provided that other major emitters amongst the developed countries do the same. And secondly, and perhaps at least as importantly, we have made a decision — not a commitment, it’s a unilateral decision — that we will, whatever comes out of the planned negotiations, reduce our CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020.”