President Barack Obama’s negotiators make their debut at United Nations climate talks on Sunday but United States promises of tougher action are unlikely to brighten prospects for a treaty now overshadowed by recession.
Up to 190 nations meet in Bonn from March 29 to April 8 to work on plugging huge gaps in a pact due to be agreed in December. Some industrial nations — Japan, Russia and Ukraine — have not even set goals for key 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
The UN’s climate chief said the mood in Bonn, the first climate negotiations since December, would be helped by US plans for stronger action but cautioned against expecting too much from Obama, struggling with the economic downturn.
”People are very excited to see the US back,” said Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat. Todd Stern, US special envoy for climate change, will head the US delegation.
”Of course they’re not coming back with a blank check. They are coming with their own requirements in the context of the current political reality,” he said. He said time was running worryingly short to work out the vastly complex deal.
”There’s a great deal of work still to be done,” said Michael Zammit Cutajar, the head of a UN committee who drafted a 30-page text for Bonn condensing a former 120 pages of ideas for a treaty, ranging from carbon markets to financial aid.
Obama wants to cut US emissions by about 15% back to 1990 levels by 2020 as part of the UN treaty — far tougher than President George Bush who foresaw US emissions peaking only in 2025.
Under Bush, the US was isolated in opposing the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, the plan for cutting emissions backed by all his industrial allies. Delegates even booed US delegates at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007.
Backtracking
But many nations have rowed back on climate plans, focusing instead on spending trillions of dollars on rescuing banks and shoring up the sagging world economy. A G20 summit in London on April 2 will test appetite for fighting climate change.
Spending on green projects, such as renewable energies or railways, accounts for about 15% of economic stimulus cash of $2-trillion to $3-trillion.
”The seriousness of the climate problem becomes more stark and disturbing with each passing year,” Stern said in a speech on March 3. He said that Washington’s policies would be guided by science, but also set clear limits.
The US could not make the deepest emissions cuts laid out by the UN Climate Panel, of 25% to 40% below 1990 levels, since it was now ”beyond the realm of the feasible”, he said.
The UN Climate Panel projects more floods, droughts, more powerful storms, heatwaves and rising sea levels from heat-trapping gases.
One big climate dispute in 2009 will be between developed nations, which have promised ”comparable” efforts in cuts. The European Union has been more ambitious than Washington, promising cuts of 20% below 1990 levels.
And developing nations led by China and India are expected to curb their rising emissions, such as by promising more efficient power plants and vehicles. The UN talks need to work out details of a a possible registry for such actions.
Poor nations say the rich should give new finance and clean technology. China, the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter ahead of the United States, this month rejected a US idea of tariffs on some imports from countries that do not place a price on carbon. — Reuters