Environmental Leaders React To APEC: "Meaningless" "Stunt" "Irrelevant" "Sideshow" - AFP

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Climate change topped the agenda at this weekend's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Sydney, its 21 members agreeing to long-term goals but failing to set binding targets in areas such as greenhouse gas emissions. Australian Prime Minister John Howard described it as "a very important milestone" toward a future global agreement that drew in both rich and poor countries.

Activists were not impressed, talking of a political stunt to promote an agreement that lacked any teeth. "Without legally binding targets for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions the Sydney Declaration is meaningless and irrelevant in addressing climate change," Greenpeace Southeast Asia energy campaigner Abigail Jabines said. "It is a political stunt. Developing nations of the Asia Pacific region cannot afford to accept lip service instead of action."

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Julie-Anne Richards, from the Climate Action Network Australia, said that environmentalists were looking to a UN-brokered meeting in Bali in December for progress on climate change because the APEC statement meant nothing. "The world doesn't have time for voluntary action, what we need is real action, real targets and real timetables," she said.

There was biting criticism too from the Los Angeles Times, which said the "aspirational" Sydney statement was political theatre designed to boost Howard's green credentials before the conservative leader faces an election later this year. "For aspirational, read: voluntary, vague and useless for anything but padding a fading prime minister's environmental resume," it said in an online editorial.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070909/sc_afp/apecsummitclimate_070909062524;_ylt=AjmnQh4c4WB67o6xIonwf3VrAlMA