US President Barack Obama said disenchantment over the Copenhagen climate talks was “justified,” but defended the chaotic outcome as the top UN envoy urged an end to post-summit recriminations.
The climate change conference held in the Danish capital ended last week with a non-binding agreement that the EU has blasted as a Sino-US stitch-up that will do little to curtail global warming.
“I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen,” Obama told PBS television on Wednesday after the summit ended with only vague prescriptions to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
“The science says that we’ve got to significantly reduce emissions over the next 40 years. There’s nothing in the Copenhagen agreement that ensures that that happens,” he said.
‘KIND OF HELD GROUND’
However, Obama added: “What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen ... at least we kind of held ground and there wasn’t too much backsliding from where we were.”
Sweden, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, this week called the summit a “disaster” and declared both China and the US, the world’s two biggest polluters, responsible for the result.
Exposing the stark divide between rich and developing nations, Britain and China have traded verbal blows over who was to blame for the Copenhagen outcome.
Brazil has blasted Obama, while India has congratulated itself for emerging from the summit without any constraints on its booming growth.
In frenzied backroom haggling last Friday, leaders of some two dozen countries put together a “Copenhagen Accord” that strived to save the grueling 12-day UN marathon from collapse.
A total of US$30 billion was pledged from 2010-2012 to help poor countries in the firing line of climate change, and rich nations sketched a target of providing US$100 billion annually by 2020.
The deal set the aim of limiting warming to 2˚C, but did not set binding targets to reduce the emissions of gases that scientists say are heating up the world’s atmosphere to dangerous levels.
In her annual Christmas broadcast, Queen Elizabeth II was to urge the 54 Commonwealth nations to keep taking the lead on global issues such as the environment.
“It is important to keep discussing issues that concern us all — there can be no more valuable role for our family of nations,” Britain’s monarch and the head of the Commonwealth will say, according to extracts released on Thursday.
SHIFTING BALANCE
In a study released on Wednesday, scientists said Earth’s various ecosystems, with all their plants and animals, will need to shift about 0.42km per year on average to keep pace with global climate change.
How well particular species can survive rising worldwide temperatures attributed to excess levels of heat-trapping “greenhouse” gases hinges on those species’ ability to migrate or adapt in place.
The farther individual species — from shrubs and trees to insects, birds and mammals — need to move to stay within their preferred climate, the greater their chance of extinction.
“Things are on the move, faster than we anticipated,” research co-author Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences said. “This rate of projected climate change is just about the same as a slow-motion meteorite in terms of the speed at which it’s asking a species to respond.”
The research suggests denizens of mountainous habitats will experience the slowest rates of climate change because they can track relatively large swings in temperature by moving up or down slope.
Thus, mountainous landscapes “may effectively shelter many species into the next century,” the scientists wrote in the study, which was to be published in yesterday’s issue of the journal Nature.
Climate change will be felt most swiftly by inhabitants of largely flat landscapes, such as mangroves and prairie grasslands, where the rate of warming may more than double the 0.42km per year average calculated for ecosystems generally, the study found.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
RSS