Excerpts from Mark Landler's story:
"Mr. Strube, chairman of BASF's supervisory board, responds with a hint of impatience when asked how European industry plans to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, requiring Germany and 34 other nations to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
As the agreement takes effect on Feb. 16, worries about its fairness are mixed with mild resentment. Europeans have set some of the most stringent targets for reducing greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the earth's atmosphere and have been linked by climate experts to global warming.
It is bad enough, in their view, that American and Chinese companies will not bear these extra costs. But worse, the ultimate goal of curbing greenhouse gases will not be realized because carbon dioxide emissions, unlike polluted rivers, are a global rather than a local problem.
"We have already done so much in the past that we feel others should not get a free ride," Mr. Strube said. "We could reach a situation where the leader is a lonely rider going into the sunset, and everyone else sits back and says, O.K., let's wait and see when he will return."
The pressure, he says, should be on the United States, which generates a fifth of the world's greenhouse gases but is staying out of the Kyoto system".