The European Union charged that Washington has blocked efforts to move global warming discussions past 2012, as 12 days of marathon UN negotiations with 5,000 delegates from around the world came to an end on Friday.
The EU wanted the nations that signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change -- including the US, which has since rejected the treaty -- to negotiate on a multilateral basis and schedule talks for next year on reducing gas emissions after 2012, when the Kyoto agreement expires.
PHOTO: AP
But Pieter van Geel, the environmental secretary for the Netherlands, which now holds the EU presidency, said he was disappointed by the results.
"I'm not optimistic," van Geel told reporters in an interview. "The US knows this is the first step toward discussing climate change, and they are very reluctant to do it under the UN."
EU representatives spearheaded a huge Old World effort in the fight against global warming. But in the end, the US, which produces nearly a quarter of the world's greenhouse gasses that are blamed for a global temperature rise, turned a deaf ear to European pleas.
"We have not managed to even push open the gate to the political future of the climate," said a German negotiator, Karsten Sach.
Negotiators from China, India and Brazil backed Washington's efforts to block talks on post-2012 emissions, charging that the world's richest nations -- which have produced most of the pollutants -- still had not done enough to lower their emissions.
Argentine President Nestor Kirchner noted that many developing countries suffer from heavy debt burdens and are limited in their ability to respond to the environmental threat. Developed countries are always demanding financial debts be paid back, but they are not willing to own up to their own environmental debts to the world.
"This double morality is unacceptable," Kirchner said.
The EU and other industrial countries like Canada and Japan were optimistic, however, because the Kyoto Protocol will go into effect on Feb. 16 despite the US' opposition. Russia's ratification this year passed the necessary threshold for the treaty to kick in.
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
‘FALLACY’: Xi’s assertions that Taiwan was given to the PRC after WWII confused right and wrong, and were contrary to the facts, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday called Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) claim that China historically has sovereignty over Taiwan “deceptive” and “contrary to the facts.” In an article published on Wednesday in the Russian state-run Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Xi said that this year not only marks 80 years since the end of World War II and the founding of the UN, but also “Taiwan’s restoration to China.” “A series of instruments with legal effect under international law, including the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration have affirmed China’s sovereignty over Taiwan,” Xi wrote. “The historical and legal fact” of these documents, as well
RSS