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发帖数: 2136 | 1 Global warming summit heads for failure amid snub by world leaders
World leaders have snubbed the next round of international climate change
negotiations in Mexico next month amid fears the talks will collapse.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 3:04PM BST 10 Oct 2010
Telegraph.co.uk
The climate change conference in the Spring break resort of Cancun seems
unlikely to be as much fun Photo: REUTERS
The last United Nations summit on global warming in Copenhagen, at the end
of last year, ended in failure and recrimination. More than 100 heads of
state turned up hoping to be part of a deal that would "save the world", but
failed to get any legal agreement to stop rising temperatures.
This year, they are declining even to attend, instead sending environment
ministers and playing down the talks as much as possible.
The process is dogged by a disagreement over the best way to limit the
growth in greenhouse gases, which are blamed by scientists for rising
temperatures. Environmentalists believe the best approach is a binding
treaty that will force all countries to cut carbon emissions. But at the
last major meeting before the Cancun summit, held in China last week,
delegates were still in dispute.
Barack Obama, US president, has failed to bring in any broad legislation to
limit greenhouse gases, while the Chinese are uncomfortable about having
their own emissions measured. The talks in China ended in mistrust, with
both sides accusing the other of failing to make clear promises to cut
carbon.
Jonathan Pershing, the US chief negotiator, admitted: "There is less
agreement than one might have hoped at this stage,"
Britain has robust targets to cut its own greenhouse gases by 80 per cent by
2050 and is keen to achieve a global deal. But European Union negotiators
have limited say amid clashes between the US and China.
Chris Huhne, the UK's climate change secretary, will be in Cancun to urge
different nations to work together. Behind the scenes British negotiators
say the best hope for the 170 countries meeting in Cancun, from Nov 29 Dec
12, is a deal on climate finance and rainforests.
Kelly Dent, Oxfam's senior climate change adviser, is hopeful that rich
countries will help poor nations to adapt to climate change and protect
rainforests. "The outlines of an agreement for Cancun are beginning to
appear, but there is still so much more [that] governments urgently need to
fill in to make it real," she said.
There are fears that Cancun may not even meet the drastically low
expectations of its participants, and that the UN-wide process of
negotiation could be abandoned in favour of thrashing out an agreement in a
smaller group such as the G8.
The eventual goal is to cut greenhouse gases in half by 2050 in order to
keep the rise in global temperatures below 2C (3.6F). |
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