British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said yesterday that failure to strike a new global deal on reducing greenhouse emissions would be catastrophic, and urged other national leaders to personally attend a climate summit in Denmark later this year.
Amid fears that momentum for agreement at the December meeting is stalling, Brown urged countries to compromise with one another to avoid “the catastrophe of unchecked climate change.”
Brown plans to attend the Copenhagen summit, intended to cap two years of negotiations on a global climate change treaty, and has called on fellow leaders to join him. So far, few have said they will go.
He told a meeting of the world’s biggest economies in London that efforts to agree on a new global pact to tackle climate change are a historic test of international cooperation.
“There are now fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next few decades,” Brown said.
“We cannot afford to fail. If we fail now we will pay a heavy price ... If we falter, the Earth will itself bet at risk,” he said.
Wealthy nations are seeking broad emissions cuts from all countries in a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol on carbon dioxide emissions. Developing countries say industrialized nations should carry most of the burden, and complain that tough limits on emissions are likely to hamper their economic growth.
Brown says both the industrialized and developing world can take advantage of business opportunities in developing new energy sources and improving energy efficiency.
“This is a test of our ability to work together as nations facing common challenges in the new global era,” he said in a speech to the 17-nation Major Economies Forum. “We have shown this year in our approach to the global economic crisis how cooperation from all can benefit each. Now, we must apply the same resolve and urgency to the climate crisis also facing us.”
Representatives from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, the EU, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Britain and the US are attending the London talks.
Pressure has been mounting for the US to finalize its position before the December conference. The Obama administration says it is tied to action by Congress, where climate bills are slowing moving toward legislation.
Other nations including India, China, Brazil and Mexico have agreed to draw up national programs to slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, but have so far resisted making those limits binding and subject to international monitoring in a treaty.
Worries over the US and China have led to mounting pessimism that a deal can be struck in Copenhagen without major policy changes.
“The prospects that states will actually agree to anything in Copenhagen are starting to look worse and worse,” Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN scientific panel studying climate change, wrote in a Friday post on the Newsweek Web site.
“Everyone realizes this is a crucial problem that we need to tackle, and everyone realizes that the deadline is a real deadline,” British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said, following initial talks on Sunday.
US President Barack Obama initiated the Major Economies Forum this year as an informal grouping to discuss key international problems.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS