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.
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