The United States got a taste of the delegates’ mood towards its environmental policies on the last day of the Earth summit. As US Secretary of State Colin Powell began his speech, he was booed and heckled by the audience. Powell had just begun by saying that the US was taking action to meet environmental challenges, including greenhouse gases. Clearly, the delegates were not willing to buy this, upset over the US decision to walk out of the climate change treaty Kyoto protocol, which would enable the world to cut down on greenhouse emissions. The US had argued it would harm its business.The scientists call the situation alarming as emission of greenhouse gases from burning oil and coal are raising temperatures around the world and steps have to be taken to control it. However, they said, with Russia’s announcement of ratifying the Kyoto protocol, it might be possible even without the US chipping in.China’s Prime Minister Zhu Rongji had already announced that it was ratifying the treaty a day before. The importance of the issue can be judged from the fact that Yashwant Sinha, Minister of External Affairs was cheered loudly in his plenary address when he announced that the ratification papers for India had been handed over to New York on August 26.India, Brazil and China are supposed to be the big three in the south to have ratified the treaty even though they are not supposed to take on targets to reduce these gases. In all the bilateral meetings that India had with various countries during the course of the summit, an effort was made to put pressure on Russia to sign. ‘‘As a gesture, India’s ratification is fine but the fact is that we are not the biggest polluters and we do not have to take on targets now,’’ said Sinha.With Russia’s signatures, the treaty has come alive once again, as the treaty needs a majority of greenhouse gas producers — responsible for 55 per cent of 1990 worldwide carbon emissions — to sign up before it can be implemented. And Russia’s involvement would take it past that level.This announcement was met with cheers from NGOs. ‘‘Russia’s confirmation is good news for the climate and brings us that bit closer to ratification of the Kyoto protocol this year,’’ Gordon Shepherd of World Wildlife Fund International said in a statement.The other big country left to enable the protocol to enter into force is Canada. On Monday, Canadian PM Jean Chretien said his country’s Parliament would vote on ratification before the end of the year.
