International Climate Change Conference Bonn, Germany July 21st 2001
Briefing papers: Japan

You are vital to these talks and you know it. If the US votes against the Kyoto targets, the European Union will need you to vote for them for there to be any chance of them becoming law.

Until recently you were in agreement with the European Union, and in favour of making the Kyoto Protocol law. However, when the US pulled out and announced that it would not stay in the Kyoto agreement, it made things difficult for you. Your President, Mr Koizumi, went to Washington at the end of June to meet President Bush who was very persuasive. It is not good to have the US as an enemy and, after all, it would be expensive for you to try to meet the Kyoto targets.

International Climate Change Conference Bonn, Germany July 21st 2001
Briefing papers: U.S.A.

You are a Republican in President Bush's party. The Republicans owe a lot to oil companies - without money donated to you by companies like Exxon-Mobil, President Bush would never have won the last elections - so you know that you are in the oil companies' debt. You have already made some policies within the USA to make them happy - like proposing to build 1,300 new fossil-fuel-fired power stations in the next 20 years, and calling for oil and gas exploration on federal lands including the Alaska wildlife reserve. Exxon-Mobil have also led the campaign in the US against the Kyoto treaty - obviously it is not in the oil companies' interests for people to use less fossil fuel.
You know that these policies have not made you popular with environmental groups but you don't really care - they¹re not likely to have much money to donate to you to help you win the next election.

President Bush opposes the Kyoto Protocol because he says it would cause serious harm to the US economy'.
Your track record is that the US, with 5% of the world¹s population, emits more than 20% of the world¹s carbon dioxide. At Kyoto, the US promised to cut emissions by 7% of the 1990 levels, but the emissions in fact rose by 10% between 1990 and 2000.

Your aim at this conference is to ensure that the Kyoto treaty does not become law. However, you don¹t want to say this out straight as it makes you look environmentally unfriendly. You have some clever things to suggest to make it look as though you are environmentally friendly. You don¹t want it to cost you much money or make the oil companies angry. You really don¹t want to cut down your greenhouse gas emissions.

One thing you could suggest is that rather than cutting greenhouse gas emissions, you could plant trees which will soak up carbon dioxide.

Another suggestion you could make is that you could pay for other countries to do things that they would otherwise be unable to do (for example pay for India to build a new gas-fired power station that would be cleaner than one of their old coal-fired ones). This is a good idea because it won¹t cost you as much as it would if you had to make the cuts in greenhouse emissions yourself. You can also make sure that it's American companies that get to build the new power stations making sure that the money goes into the US economy. (of course you don¹t need to say this bit to everyone at the conference!)