JONATHAN PERSHING: "Our focus is not to repeat Kyoto," says the United States' lead climate negotiator.
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The latest round of preparatory talks for the U.N. climate conference concluded today with negotiators lamenting that the languid pace of talks could mean there won't be a deal on emissions in Copenhagen this December.
"It would be incomprehensible if this opportunity were lost," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. For any hope of a deal, he said, "the speed of the negotiations must be considerably accelerated at the [next] meeting in Bangkok."
The United States' lead climate negotiator, Jonathan Pershing, added to the warnings.
"If we don't have more movement and more consensus than we saw here, we won't have an agreement," Pershing said.
Though the problems were many, there were also glimmers of hope in the current round, such as a collective agreement on what should be done, said Anders Turesson, Sweden's lead climate negotiator and chairman of the E.U. working group.
"What we're talking about is a profound change of industrial civilization," Turesson said. "It would be surprising if there weren't stumbling blocks."
The negotiators were wrapping up a week of talks in Bonn, Germany, aimed at narrowing the number of options in the 200-page main negotiating document. This text, which will serve as the basis for negotiations for the successor to 1997's Kyoto Protocol, is currently inundated with some 2,000 bracketed statements highlighting areas of disagreement.
"We seem to be afloat on a sea of brackets," de Boer said. The document has not been significantly slimmed down in the week's discussions.
Much debate hinges on whether the U.S. Senate will pass climate legislation this fall. Pershing made it clear that the United States will use whatever domestic legislation it passes as the basis for its carbon reduction agreements.
"Our focus is not to repeat Kyoto," Pershing said, recalling the climate treaty that the United States helped negotiate but the Senate did not ratify.
The rosiest interpretations of the House's recently passed climate bill would see U.S. greenhouse gas emissions dropping by up to 13 percent from 1990 levels, de Boer said, well below commitments made by the European Union to reduce its emissions by 20 percent.
In the end, Europeans want to be on comparative terms with the Americans, Turesson said. How that will be accomplished is unclear, given the domestic limits the United States faces.
The U.S. position is that the agreement that will emerge, rather than mandating a single percentage cut that will be met by every wealthy nation, "is something [that will be] conceived country by country," Pershing said.
From developing nations, the United States is seeking not legally binding targets but legally binding actions, Pershing said. One such example would be a quantified commitment from Brazil on how it will tackle deforestation.
Developing nations have been seeking financing from developed countries if they are to limit their emissions and adapt to climate change. So far, there has not been one proposal from developed nations that would raise more than $10 billion a year for such funding, negotiators said.
Meanwhile, the commitments currently on the table from industrial countries will only reduce emissions between 10 and 16 percent from 1990 levels, according to Dessima Williams, the permanent representative of Grenada to the United Nations and chairwoman of the Alliance of Small Island States.
Unless changed, these pledges will lead to temperature change of more than 3 degrees Celsius, Williams said.
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8 Comments
Add CommentCan the World Unite to form a suicide pact?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWill there be enough parking spots to accommodate the large number of private jets which will be parked in Copenhagen?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing how republican soccerdad can try to make a political issue out of an environmental concern. Please evolve or go away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnotslic,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead the article - it's mostly political.
I am finding support worldwide mounting for the D & D strategy -- Delay and Denial. The people of Earth are realizing that this is no more than a Global Tax being foisted on them by charlatans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is sound hard to reach an agreement on the climate change issue between the two groups--the developed countries and the developing countries, in that there are so many fundamentally different interests and benefits between them. On the table, every negotiator is on behalf of his nation, or even said insularity, regardless of the whole world situation--rising temperature and sea level, more frequently drought and floods, and so forth. We can wait for a final consensus, but the nature will not give us so much time to negotiate. Maybe it will be late to tackle the climate change problem when an agreement is reached. A big warning!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGLOBAL WARMING....... perfectly NATURAL Global Warming is occurring, and will continue to occur, notwithstanding any efforts by the human race to step in, in our usual arrogant manner, and try to stop it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhatever else we know, or don't know about it, global warming has certainly occurred between every ice age the earth has experienced; and there have been a few.
Do not be alarmed that the politicians will be playing "what's-in-it-for-me" games. They have quite likely been fully briefed on this situation and know full well that the less resources we waste trying to stop the unstoppable, the more will be available for the wealthier countries to endure the survival of the important and necessary folks, such as politicians and their families and servants and hangers-on.
The world unfolds as is its wont.......still.
arrrgh!! Typos!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat should have read "ensure" the survival of, in the above......(Not endure)