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.
Taiwan’s exports soared to an all-time high of US$61.8 billion last month, surging 49.7 percent from a year earlier, as the global frenzy for artificial intelligence (AI) applications and new consumer electronics powered shipments of high-tech goods, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. It was the first time exports had exceeded the US$60 billion mark, fueled by the global boom in AI development that has significantly boosted Taiwanese companies across the international supply chain, Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) told a media briefing. “There is a consensus among major AI players that the upcycle is still in its early stage,”
‘SECRETS’: While saying China would not attack during his presidency, Donald Trump declined to say how Washington would respond if Beijing were to take military action US President Donald Trump said that China would not take military action against Taiwan while he is president, as the Chinese leaders “know the consequences.” Trump made the statement during an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes program that aired on Sunday, a few days after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea. “He [Xi] has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘we would never do anything while President Trump is president,’ because they know the consequences,” Trump said in the interview. However, he repeatedly declined to say exactly how Washington would respond in
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said yesterday that China using armed force against Taiwan could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, allowing the country to mobilize the Japanese armed forces under its security laws. Takaichi made the remarks during a parliamentary session yesterday while responding to a question about whether a "Taiwan contingency" involving a Chinese naval blockade would qualify as a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, according to a report by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun. "If warships are used and other armed actions are involved, I believe this could constitute a survival- threatening
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said it expected to issue a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-Wong tomorrow, which it said would possibly make landfall near central Taiwan. As of 2am yesterday, Fung-Wong was about 1,760km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, moving west-northwest at 26kph. It is forecast to reach Luzon in the northern Philippines by tomorrow, the CWA said. After entering the South China Sea, Typhoon Fung-Wong is likely to turn northward toward Taiwan, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張峻堯) said, adding that it would likely make landfall near central Taiwan. The CWA expects to issue a land
RSS