Brazil Rejects Bush Climate Proposal

Brazil's president bluntly dismissed the climate-change plan offered by George Bush last week as "voluntarism" in a situation where "multinationalism" is needed. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose fast-developing country is critical to any international deal on emissions cuts, said the proposal for a new international framework was a ruse to sidestep the UN,

Lula joins a long list of world leaders who have rejected the Bush proposal. "I cannot accept the idea that we have to build another group to discuss the same issues that were discussed in Kyoto and not fulfilled,"  Lula said. In the wind-up to the G8 summit in Germany this week, only Tony Blair has hailed the Bush plan. (More climate change stories.)