NUSA DUA, BALI: The United States worsened the deadlock in the ongoing global climate change talks here on Thursday night, putting forward a proposal that seems to completely discard the international U.N. framework, in favour of separate national-level efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without any binding international commitment.
“It is their national position. But it is one thing to have a national position and another to impose it on the world ... without even mentioning the Convention framework,” said a senior member of the Indian delegation at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change conference, which is trying to construct a Bali road map to launch negotiations to create a post-2012 global climate agreement by the end of 2009.
The first commitment period of the Convention’s Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. had not ratified, would end in 2012. The new U.S. text calls for “domestic mitigation actions” and “national emission limitation and reduction objectives, taking into account national circumstances.”
The Group of 77 developing countries and China rejected the U.S. plan and put forward their own proposal. A senior member of the Indian delegation said the G-77 proposal offered their suggestions on how to engage the U.S. without diluting the agreement.
Greenpeace International’s Shane Rattenbury accused the U.S. of trying to make it impossible to reach an agreement in Bali. “This proposal would throw away 12 years of progress. It’s a made-in-the-USA plan for a climate catastrophe, undoing any commitments to cutting greenhouse gases.”
A group of Ministers from about 40 of the most influential nations was closeted in an all-night meeting on Thursday in an effort to break the deadlock. The conference would end on Friday.
Even as the Ministers deliberated, the star campaigner and Nobel Laureate Al Gore urged delegates to forge an ambitious deal without his country. “I am not an official and I am not bound by diplomatic niceties. So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth: My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali,” Mr. Gore said to loud applause.
Anticipating a change in the U.S. government by 2009, Mr. Gore called on delegates to “negotiate around this enormous obstacle, this elephant in the room,” rather than issuing a vague, uncommitted road map in an effort to include the U.S.
“You can feel anger and frustration and direct it at the United States of America. Or, you can make a second choice, you can decide to move forward and do all of the difficult work that needs to be done and save a large open blank space in your document and put a footnote by it,” he suggested.
Earlier, the European Union threatened to boycott the U.S.-hosted meeting of major emitters, to be held in Hawaii next month, unless a deal was reached here.
