[DEBATE] : Climate talks stalled amid rows

[MFleshman at aol.com]

The EU  is full of organic fertilizer as usual.  Kyoto set numerical targets 
for  reductions that the Europeans cheerfully ignored. Emissions went up. Why 
should  anybody think a successor agreement will be any different?   Ban  
ki-moon's sole interest is to salvage his meeting, not the planet. 
 
Buy  land in Lesotho friends. It'll soon be  beachfront.   
 
 
 


Climate talks stalled amid rows 
Talks at the UN  climate summit in Bali have continued past their scheduled 
end despite optimism  that a compromise could be reached between the EU and US. 
 
The EU has been pressing for the final text to include a specific commitment  
that industrialised nations should cut their emissions by 25-40% by 2020.  
The US and Canada oppose firm cuts and neither side shows signs of giving  
way.  
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was returning to the talks from East 
 Timor to assist negotiators.  
"I will go back to Bali tomorrow [Saturday] morning again to meet  with the 
delegations... and engage myself in continuing further negotiations,"  he told 
a press briefing in the capital, Dili.  
The Indonesian hosts of the climate summit have been trying to bridge the  
gulf between the two sides with a text that reportedly excluded firm numerical  
targets for 2020, but did contain acceptances that greenhouse gas emissions 
need  to be stabilised by the end of the next decade and that rich nations 
should play  the major part in the effort.  
Neither the EU nor the US has formally accepted the compromise wording.  
Though senior players on both sides have suggested agreement is likely, it  
appears that many hours of further discussion may lie ahead.  
'Good climate'  
"I think the situation is good, and the climate in the climate conference is  
good, and we will have success in the end," Germany's Environment Minister  
Sigmar Gabriel told reporters.  

The chief US negotiator Harlan Watson told the AFP news agency:  "I'm always 
optimistic. I think we will have an agreement." 
 
And the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change  
(UNFCCC) Yvo de Boer, who had earlier expressed concerns about the slow pace 
of  talks, said it was unlikely that the meeting would end without an 
agreement.  
"It's possible but it won't happen," he said.  
"It won't happen because such public pressure has been built to deliver a  
result here, I do not believe ministers will be able to leave this conference  
without a political answer to the scientific message they have received.  
"Everybody is working hard towards a result, nobody wants to see it fail and  
nobody wants to be the country that makes it fail."  
Big emitters  
The talks are aiming to begin a process - the "Bali roadmap" - that will  
eventually lead to a treaty replacing the Kyoto Protocol when its current  
targets expire in 2012.  
The US, Canada and Japan have consistently opposed EU nations' demands for  
concrete targets to be included at this stage.  
The US delegation in Bali has come under widespread criticism from  
environmental advocates. 
 
And on Thursday, EU ministers threatened to boycott a US-led climate summit  
for major emitters next month unless the Bush administration backed binding  
emissions targets.  
That summit, in Honolulu, will be the second gathering of the "major  
economies" or "big emitters" group, an initiative established by the Bush  
administration in September.  
It works on the basis of voluntary emissions targets, and is widely seen in  
environmental groups as a distraction from the UN process.  
Among those criticising the US was Nobel laureate and former Vice-President  
Al Gore, who spoke to a packed hall on Thursday.  
Mr Gore won loud applause from delegates as he said: "My own country, the  
United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress in Bali."  
But the Nobel Peace Prize laureate also urged delegates not to give up,  
reminding them that the US presidential election in 2008 could herald a new  
approach in Washington.  
"Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not 
 now. You must anticipate that," he said. 
 
The US is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and  most parties 
recognise that climate change talks without it would be  meaningless.  
Meanwhile, a leading US climate scientist told the BBC he was writing to UK  
Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel asking them 
 to block construction of coal-fired power stations.  
James Hansen says that Britain's early industrialisation means it has  
probably produced more greenhouse gases than any other nation.  

Story from BBC  NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7143810.stm

Published:  2007/12/14 
© BBC MMVII







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