Pelosi Talks Climate Change In Brussels
- May 31st, 2007
- Posted by EUEditor
The Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has been talking with European leaders before the G8 meeting on the world economy next week, in Germany.Representative Pelosi brought with her a delegation of six other members of Congress with interests in the environment and climate change, a high priority item in EU policy – and a point of divergence between the European Union and President George Bush.
“The European Union … has been bringing together all these wonderful countries in a cutting-edge approach to the climate change issue,” she said.
The European model would be useful to follow, and “it would make economic sense to approach the problem sooner rather than later.”
Ms Pelosi’s Democratic Party has had a majority in Congress since elections last November, and it has sought to reign in actions of the Republican President’s administration, like funding for the war in Iraq – achieving amendments, though not time limits on funding it had wanted.
However she wanted to say in Brussels there was much common ground on the American side:
“The Executive branch will lead the discussion (in G8); we have not come to discuss differences … I think there are many areas where agreement can be reached.”
The Congressional group has been to Berlin and London, where it visited Sir Nicholas Stern, the economist who last year issued an authoritative report warning of an economic and environmental crisis, over climate change.
It has also been discussing international trade issues focused on trying to re-start the Doha Round world trade negotiations.
Nancy Pelosi noted the nomination by President Bush of a former US Deputy Secretary of State, Paul Zoellick, to be the next President of the World Bank.
She said they had worked together on responses to the Darfur crisis in Sudan, where Mr Zoellick had shown he was sensitive to the needs of the developing world, and sensitive to the need to resolve conflict in a peaceful way.
He will replace Paul Wolfowitz who is leaving the World Bank over an ethics issue.
Picture: Nancy Pelosi leading a US Congressional delegation, at the European Commission in Brussels, 30.5.07