The US threatened to derail a deal on global climate change yesterday by expressing strong opposition to the existing Kyoto protocol and urging other rich countries to help set up a legal agreement which, unlike Kyoto, would force all countries, including developing nations, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement the US wants is a deal to cover all countries, that would leave each free to choose their own emission targets and timetables.
Representatives from the EU, in the meeting in Bangkok, sided with the US in seeking an agreement, saying that they hoped the best elements of Kyoto could be kept, but China and many developing countries hit back, stating that the protocol, the world’s only legally binding commitment to get countries to reduce emissions, was “not negotiable.”
With only a few days of formal UN negotiations left before the crunch Copenhagen meeting in December, and with the world’s two largest emitters refusing to give ground, a third way might now have to be found to secure agreement.
Last night, it emerged that lawyers for the EU were in talks with the US delegation, seeking a way out of the impasse threatening a deal.
In a day of high rhetoric, Jonathan Pershing, the chief US negotiator, said the US had moved significantly in the last year.
“There has been a startling change in the US position. There is now engagement. We have had a 10-fold increase [in] finance from the US. We have put US$80 billion into a green economic stimulus package. One year ago there was no commitment to a global agreement,” Pershing said.
He forcefully outlined, however, US opposition to Kyoto.
“We are not going to be in the Kyoto protocol,” he said. “We are not going to be part of an agreement that we cannot meet. We say a new agreement has to [be signed] by all countries. Things have changed since Kyoto. Where countries were in 1990 and today is very different. We cannot be stuck with an agreement 20 years old. We want action from all countries.”
Yu Qingtai (于慶泰), China’s special representative on climate talks, said rich countries should not desert the Kyoto agreement, which all industrialized countries except the US signed up to and which was ratified in 2002 after years of negotiations. The protocol contains no requirement for developing countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions, as both their current and historical emissions are low in most cases. China, however, with its surging economy and huge population, is now the world’s biggest polluter.
“The Kyoto protocol is not negotiable,” Yu said. “We want [it] to be strengthened. We don’t want to kill Kyoto. We really want a revival, a strengthening of the treaty.”
China was backed by the G77 group of 130 nations and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), made up of Caribbean and Pacific countries that expect to become uninhabitable if a strong climate agreement is not secured.
“We face an emergency. We want commitments,” AOSIS spokeswoman Dessima Williams said. “We did not create the problem. Any mechanism currently in use is one we want to maintain. National actions are important, but they are no substitute for an international framework.”
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