Prospects for an ambitious accord to tame global warming darkened on Thursday with the United Nations summit deadlocked only hours before 120 world leaders are meant to put their seal on a deal.
After 10 days of often bitter haggling, a pall of gloom hung over the marathon UN climate summit.
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, working the conference hall ahead of President Barack Obama’s arrival on Friday, said it was ”time to take an historic step we can all be proud of”.
But many leaders already in place went public with their fears that the result could be a damp squib.
”I fear a triumph of form over substance. I fear a triumph of inaction over action,” Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a speech to the conference in the Danish capital Copenhagen.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking in Berlin, said that the news from Copenhagen was ”not good”.
”At the moment, the negotiations do not look promising but I of course hope that the presence of more than 100 heads of state and government can give the necessary impetus to the event.”
Merkel said the Copenhagen summit would be a failure if nations did not agree to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.
”At this hour, I don’t know if that will be successful,” she said of the goal. ”I will do everything I can, together with our environment minister, to achieve that.”
Conference hosts Denmark were still fighting for a deal, a Danish delegate insisted. ”We haven’t given up” on an agreement, the source said.
”We are fighting with all our strength to end the impasse, but we are only the host country. Everything depends on the parties [UN countries] themselves. If they don’t want an agreement, what can be done?”
A deeply gloomy senior delegate told Agence France-Presse: ”It won’t be feasible to get a complete agreement unless it’s just one page. We need several more months.”
Scientists say the cost of failure on limiting the rise in temperatures to two degrees centigrade will be catastrophic with hundreds of millions of people already facing worsening drought, flood, storms and rising seas.
The US was widely condemned for foot dragging on climate change under the previous president George W Bush, and Obama is hoping that his presence will be evidence of a transformation of policy.
The Obama administration has already said it will table an offer in Copenhagen to curb emissions in the world’s largest economy by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 — well below pledges by Europe and Japan.
In a sign of goodwill, Clinton announced that the US would contribute towards a fund worth $100-billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with climate change.
She said the contribution would be ”in the context of a strong accord in which all major economies stand behind meaningful [greenhouse-gas] mitigation actions and provide full transparency as to their implementation.”
Emerging economic giants such as China and India say they are willing to promise voluntary measures to slow their forecast surges in emissions.
But they are reluctant to be subject to tight international scrutiny and insistent that developed nations should take the lead in committing to substantial reduction targets.
Clinton said that the US insisted on a deal that made pledges transparent and subject to scrutiny.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Copenhagen on Wednesday, saying he wanted ”to show that the Chinese government and people attach great importance to the climate change issue by attending this summit”.
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, meanwhile, said he would not cannot accept a global warming treaty that would stall its drive to lift millions out of poverty.
”Climate change cannot be addressed by perpetuating the poverty of the developing countries,” Singh said as he flew out.
India and China have been at the forefront of criticism of the negotiations process which has been chaired by the summit host Denmark, saying it has lacked transparency while other smaller nations have complained of being sidelined. — AFP
