OSLO: Five years after berating Washington for pulling out, many backers of the UN’s Kyoto Protocol are wavering in the fight against global warming.

Many European Union nations are giving high-polluting industries and power generators easier than expected targets in plans due to be submitted to Brussels by June 30 about how they aim to meet cleaner air goals by 2008-12.

And Ottawa gave Kyoto the worst snub to date in March, saying Canada would be unable to reach a goal of cutting fossil fuel emissions from factories, power plants and cars by 2012.

“EU member states seem to be competing with each other to give more beneficial allocations (to industry). It won’t add up,” said Terry Barker, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research at Cambridge University.

At the heart of much climate debate is who will pay — and how much — to curb what many scientists say could be drastic climate changes ranging from droughts to rising sea levels.

“Environmentalists said Kyoto would be virtually cost-free,” said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish Kyoto sceptic who heads the Copenhagen Consensus Center. Lax EU goals show “most countries are starting to realise that it will be very costly,” he said.

Lomborg reckons Kyoto would cost $150 billion a year if fully implemented and that fighting disease and hunger, ensuring clean water or promoting free trade would be money better spent.

Many other experts say costs are likely to be insignificant.

A study in the journal Nature last month estimated that even the toughest global climate goals for the entire 21st century — far beyond Kyoto — would only brake growth of the world economy by one percentage point by 2100.

“The price of Kyoto will be less than many people thought,” said David Doniger, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington.

President George W. Bush pulled out in 2001, saying Kyoto would cost US jobs and wrongly omits poor nations. Many Kyoto supporters who bitterly criticised Bush at the time are now jibing at tough measures.

Among EU nations, for instance, both France and Germany on Thursday proposed plans that will allow rises in emissions. Germany, Europe’s biggest polluter, is proposing to cut its emissions by nearly 5.6 per cent in 2008-12 from 2005-07.

—Reuters