LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. -- The European Union's top negotiator in international climate talks says U.S. indifference to a global carbon cap and the Kyoto Protocol has made it easier for emerging economic powers like India and China to take the process less seriously.

In a far-ranging interview here, Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's climate action commissioner, said the United States has not helped when it comes to considering what becomes of the 1997 Kyoto treaty when it expires next year or in moving toward a new treaty on carbon emissions.

This is especially important as Europeans press for new emissions targets for a second commitment period under Kyoto, she said. With the protocol expiring in 2012, the treaty calls for further targets, and the issue is likely to feature prominently during the climate summit slated for Durban, South Africa, this summer.

"It is of course quite a challenge," said Hedegaard, who was in California to attend Fortune magazine's Brainstorm Green conference and pay a visit to Silicon Valley and Gov. Jerry Brown (D). "As long as the United States is not moving in international talks, it continues to be relatively easy for other countries to hide behind the back of the United States."

Hedegaard also appeared on a panel here alongside a corporate executive and environmentalists, all of whom wondered if the cap-and-trade concept has become a thing of the past. But the E.U. minister was adamant that a market-based emissions reduction scheme still has relevance, with or without the United States.

E.U. Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard. Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Asked if cap and trade might not be too complicated, Hedegaard shot back, "It might be for the Americans. It is not for the Chinese."

'Some of us are still trying'

"It is not dead," she added, pointing to the 89 nations that have committed to voluntary carbon targets through talks engineered by the United Nations. "Some of us are still trying to get an international agreement."

She also acknowledged the political impasse in the U.S. Congress, but she suspects that dynamic will start to thaw in the years ahead as energy prices continue a steady ascent.

"One thing that is for sure about the future is energy prices are going up," she said during the interview. "I just wonder for how long the Americans would continue not to address technology development."

During the panel, Michael Shellenberger, president of the Breakthrough Institute and author of the 2004 essay, "The Death of Environmentalism," scoffed at the notion that 89 nations' agreeing to voluntary targets indicates progress.

He suggested the United States should shift from cap and trade, which hasn't passed and appears to be trending downward, to pouring money -- like the Chinese -- into clean technology research and development (Greenwire, April 5).

Hedegaard's response to Shellenberger was to say it's a mistake to delink technology R&D from a market-based emissions scheme.

Sees 'significant steps' in China and South Korea

"All other things being equal, when you set a price, you create some kind of incentive to invest in technologies that emit less," she said. "It's not an either-or scenario; cap and trade and technology are very much linked."

On international talks, Hedegaard insisted there is a way forward for Kyoto. Better to extend the treaty's "huge complex of rules" than to go back to square one, she said. "It's not that easy to just say, 'Shouldn't we start from scratch?'" she added. "We think it's a priority that ... we carry on. We can carry over."

She also acknowledged the frustration that was evident in international climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Cancun, Mexico. "I agree that obviously this process is slow. It's slower than I would like it to be," she said.

At the same time, Hedegaard believes there is daylight ahead. She pointed to South Korea and China, where, respectively, a green growth effort and a five-year plan on clean technologies have lately been pegged as key priorities.

"We have actually moved some significant steps," she insisted. "Things are starting to happen now in a lot of places."

Sullivan is based in San Francisco.