US threatens to boycott US-led climate talks

The Statesman , Friday, December 14, 2007
Correspondent : Staff Reporter
Associated Press

BALI, Dec. 13: As UN talks entered their final hours, European nations today threatened to boycott a US-led climate meeting next month unless Washington agrees to a deal mentioning numerical targets for deep reductions in global warming gases.

Adding to the pressure, former US vice President Mr Al Gore said the United States was “principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that.” The Nobel Peace Prize winner’s one-hour speech at the conference elicited cheers from delegates.

Earlier, the United Nations warned that time was running out for an agreement aimed at launching negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol and the talks in Bali were in danger of “falling to pieces.”

The USA, Japan, Russia and several other governments refuse to accept language in a draft document suggesting that industrialized nations consider cutting emissions by 25 per cent to 40 per cent by 2020, saying specific targets would limit the scope of future talks.

The European Union and others say the figures reflect the measures scientists say are needed to rein in global warming and head off predictions of rising sea levels, worsening floods and droughts, and the extinction of plant and animal species.

“No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting,” said Mr Sigmar Gabriel, top EU environment official from Germany, referring to a series of separate climate talks initiated by US President George W. Bush in September. “This is the clear position of the EU. I do not know what we should talk about if there is no target.”

Brazil's Climate Change Ambassador Mr Sergio Barbosa Serra said his government was not threatening a boycott, but would take any omission of numerical targets “into account” when it decides whether to attend the Major Economies Meeting.

The USA invited 16 other major economies to that Washington meeting, including European countries, Japan, China and India, to discuss a program of what are expected to be nationally determined, voluntary cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions.

The Bush administration views the major economies process as the main vehicle for determining future steps by the USA ~ and, it hopes, by others ~ to slow emissions.

The talks bring together nearly 190 governments in Bali are scheduled to wrap up tomorrow.

Mr Gore, who won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for helping alert the world to the danger of climate change, urged delegates to reach agreement even without the backing of the United States, saying President Bush's successor, who will take office in January 2009, would likely be more supportive of binding cuts.

“Over the next two years, the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now,” he said. “I must tell you candidly that I cannot promise that the person who is elected will have the position I expect they will have, but I can tell you I believe it is quite likely.”

Mr Gore, who helped in the final negotiation of the Kyoto pact in 1997, also called for implementing a successor agreement to Kyoto two years early, in 2010. The first implementation period of the Kyoto pact expires at the end of 2012. “We can't afford to wait another five years,” he said.

 
SOURCE : The Statesman, Friday, 14 December 2007
 


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