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Obama to attend Copenhagen, U.N. happy
Bonn, Germany (UPI) Nov 25, 2009 The top U.N. climate official welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to attend the climate summit next month in Copenhagen, Denmark. Obama's decision to travel to Copenhagen on Dec. 9 before heading to nearby Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize was critical to a good outcome of the summit, Yvo de Boer, the United Nations' top climate negotiator, said Wednesday in the western German city of Bonn. "I think it's critical that President Obama attend the climate-change summit in Copenhagen," he said. He added that U.S. negotiators needed to bring to the Dec. 8-17 meeting a clear commitment on climate protection until 2020. "We need an indication from the United States on what it can do in numerical terms to reduce its emissions," he said. All industrialized countries have put forward concrete emissions reductions -- except the United States. "This is the first thing we need, and this is critical." The EU has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels. Japan has said it is willing to cut emissions by 25 percent. Washington earlier this week indicated that it might be willing to bring binding emissions reductions targets to Copenhagen. The problem, however, is that a corresponding climate production bill is stalling in the U.S. Senate and won't be decided upon until early 2010. Moreover, the U.S. bill would reduce emissions by 17 percent to 20 percent by 2020, but only compared with 2005 levels. Taking the benchmark 1990 year would signify reductions of only 4 percent, experts say. Leading developing nations including India and China understandably say that this is not ambitious enough. Observers don't expect for Copenhagen to produce a fully binding treaty; but de Boer said he was optimistic that the summit would produce a list of political targets for 2020 of all industrialized countries. Those targets could then be confirmed by a treaty agreed at one of the later climate-change summits. "I don't think any country would back away from their target in the course of a negotiating process to a treaty," he added. Copenhagen is expected to also prolong until 2020 the Kyoto Protocol, which will run out in 2012. The Copenhagen conference was due to produce a treaty to replace Kyoto, but it now seems that such an ending is out of reach. Overall, current emissions reductions pledges are insufficient to keep the temperature increase below 2 degrees C, experts say. A warming climate will lead to rising sea levels as well as severe droughts and floods.
earlier related report UN chief Ban Ki-moon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen have all been invited because "there was some concern about the way negotiations were going ahead of Copenhagen next month," Prime Minister Patrick Manning said. He told a news conference he put the three extra seats at the table after consulting with Britain and the United Nations -- and was "aware of talk" of US President Barack Obama also being invited, though that ultimately went nowhere. The aim of including the other speakers was to bolster the weight of a political statement from the Commonwealth -- whose 53 nations account for a third of the planet's population, or two billion people -- ahead of the December 7-18 UN climate change talks in the Danish capital, he said. "We feel it can have some influence on the way decisions go in Denmark," he said. His statements reflected international concern that the climate change meeting could fall far short of its goal of fixing substantial greenhouse gas emission cuts. Those doubts, sharper several weeks ago when the invitations were extended, have been allayed a little by Obama saying on Wednesday he would attend Copenhagen, and China pledging on Thursday to cut carbon dioxide emissions by up to 45 percent in 2020, based on per unit of gross domestic product calculated at 2005 levels. However the practical contribution the world's two biggest greenhouse gas polluters will make to the bottom line of any treaty remained questionable, especially as both the United States and China face strong domestic pressures to favor their national economies over the environment. Obama's offer to curb US emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 is conditional on approval from a reluctant US Congress, while an official statement in China stressed the "enormous pressure and special difficulty in controlling greenhouse gas emissions" it faced. The Commonwealth summit is the last major gathering of world leaders before the UN climate conference in Copenhagen. Organizers said it was important because it gave underrepresented countries a chance to speak alongside richer or more powerful nations. "It allows the world's small countries to have their voice heard," Commonwealth secretariat spokesman Eduardo del Buey told AFP. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, the titular head of the Commonwealth, will open the Trinidad summit early Friday before handing the microphone over to other officials, including Ban, Sarkozy and Rasmussen. She arrived in Trinidad's capital of Port of Spain on Thursday, just after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Ban was expected later Thursday. Sarkozy was to fly in from another climate change conference in the northern Brazilian city of Manaus on Thursday that turned out to be something of a flop. The Manaus meeting had been designed to bring together the heads of state of the countries encompassing the vast Amazon forest -- including Guiana, a South America territory administratively considered a part of France. But in the end only three of the nine presidents turned up: Sarkozy, Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo. The leaders of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela all canceled, most citing scheduling problems, and sent their foreign ministers or other, more junior officials instead. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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China and US leaders boost climate summit Paris (AFP) Nov 26, 2009 US and Chinese proposals for tackling greenhouse gases were hailed Thursday while confirmation their leaders will attend next month's climate summit boosted hopes for a global-warming accord. Beijing unveiled its first targets for tackling its emissions and announced that Premier Wen Jiabao would take part in the Copenhagen summit, soon after Washington confirmed that US President Barack ... read more |
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