E.U. Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard will host a high-level meeting next month of countries considered to be ambitious about reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The United States is not invited.

Hedegaard, in Washington, D.C., this week for meetings with Obama administration officials and to receive a Women and the Green Economy Leadership Award, said the May 7-8 talks in Brussels are aimed at strengthening the alliance that helped deliver an agreement at last year's U.N. climate change negotiations in Durban, South Africa.

There, the European Union joined forces with low-lying island nations and the world's poorest countries to pressure the United States as well as emerging powers like China and India to agree to work on a new international climate treaty that will by 2020 include developed as well as developing nations.

"We have invited some of the more progressive countries in order to take stock of where we are after Durban," Hedegaard said. Asked if that includes American leaders, she said, "The United States is not a part of this."

The meeting, she said, is distinct from the Major Economies Forum led by the United States and made up of the world's largest carbon emitters that will meet in Rome later this month, and builds upon E.U. outreach to nearly 40 countries in the past months. A major focus, Hedegaard said, will be on how to prod nations to be more ambitious about curbing carbon before 2020.

"It's good that countries have accepted that post-2020, we will all have to be legally bound, but it is this decade that is really important," Hedegaard said. Noting that the next assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected out in 2014, she said, "I'm pretty sure that it will not be a message that says it's OK to sit back and relax."

The United States has pledged to cut emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels in this decade, and State Department climate envoy Todd Stern has made clear he does not expect countries that only recently pledged certain targets to offer to do still more. The United States also has no legislation to ensure it meets its promise, although U.S. EPA announced yesterday sweeping new regulations that would bar coal-fired power plants from emitting more carbon dioxide than natural gas plants.

Praise for EPA greenhouse gas rules

That proposed rule is expected to help the United States meet its international goal, and Hedegaard yesterday praised the move.

"I think it is positive that despite the challenges of the political climate in the U.S., through EPA regulations, things are actually moving forward," she said.

She also gave somewhat of a pass to India, which declared in a recent submission to the United Nations that the question of how to be more ambitious before 2020 is one that applies only to industrialized countries.

"All of us will have to do our utmost in the run-up to 2020. And developed countries will have to consider more what they can do than a country like India, which still has 400 million people without electricity," she said. "Lots of developed countries will have to discuss if there is more that we can do."

Meanwhile, she insisted, the United States, China and others can forget about the European Union backing down on its aviation carbon levy. But, she said, the European Union would consider amending its law if there was a global deal on airline emissions.

Europe's trading scheme calls for all airlines to pay for their carbon emissions on flights in or out of Europe. China already has retaliated, throwing into upheaval the government approval of dozens of Airbus aircraft orders. The company, along with Boeing, has joined the chorus of criticism of the E.U. law.

"I find it interesting that those countries that don't like the European regional scheme say, 'We'd much rather preserve a global scheme,'" Hedegaard said. "Fine."

She maintained that if the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) could come up with a global plan to tackle rising carbon emissions from the sector, Europe's aviation law could become unnecessary.

"It depends how good it is," she said of a still-theoretical global agreement, and noted that the levies won't start flowing until next year. "We have an extremely open mind and are keen to see progress in ICAO. If the world wants, there is still time to do that," she said.

But, she said, until a global deal is reached, the European Union remains unified behind its law. She argued it would be a slippery slope for Europe to back down on a hard-fought policy just because some nations and businesses opposed it.

"In democratic societies, that is not how it can be," Hedegaard said. "What would come next?"