China accused some developed nations on Friday at UN climate talks of seeking to kill the Kyoto Protocol pact to curb global warming, in a damaging standoff with Japan, Russia and Canada.
Venezuela and Bolivia also branded some rich countries “unacceptable” for distancing themselves from the Kyoto accord, stepping up sparring before ministers arrive for this week’s climax of the Nov. 29-Dec. 10 talks in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun.
Developing countries favor an extension of the 1997 protocol, which obliges only developed nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions until 2012, while many rich nations prefer a new agreement that includes emerging economies led by China.
Some countries “even want to kill the Kyoto Protocol, to end the Kyoto Protocol,” Huang Huikang (黃惠康), a special representative for climate change negotiations at China’s foreign ministry, told reporters. “This is a very worrying movement.”
The future of the 1997 Kyoto pact was the main hurdle at the 194-nation talks that are seeking to agree a modest package of measures to slow global warming, Huang said.
Ambitions are low after last year’s Copenhagen summit failed to agree on a binding UN treaty.
The UN climate chief said Kyoto backers and opponents were poles apart and called for compromise on a deal to help slow what the UN panel of climate experts says will be more floods, droughts, desertification and rising ocean levels.
“It is of course a position that is 180 degrees opposite,” said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN climate body, naming reluctant Kyoto members Canada, Russia and Japan in contrast to Venezuela and Bolivia.
“I don’t think that it will be possible to guarantee a second commitment period here in Cancun. I know for sure that Cancun cannot obliterate the possibility,” she said.
A Japanese negotiator, Akira Yamada, sitting beside Huang at a news conference, said: “Kyoto killing is a kind of propaganda wording. Japan does not want to kill Kyoto.”
A text drafted by experts on Friday outlined two options for breaking the Kyoto deadlock.
One option specifically mentions future cuts as part of Kyoto. The other urges deeper emissions reductions by the rich and the launch of a vague “process ... without prejudice to final form and outcome or relationship to Kyoto Protocol.”
The Kyoto impasse stalled progress on a deal to save tropical forests, Figueres said, and it was unclear whether the Cancun talks would be able to launch a fund to channel aid to poor nations.
Cancun is a test of whether the UN talks can advance when many nations are struggling with anemic growth and disputes ranging from trade to currencies. Failure would be a blow to the UN as the main forum for designing a world economic model less dependent on fossil fuels.
The head of the US delegation, Todd Stern, said the Cancun outcome “hung in the balance.”
“It may be that the Kyoto problems tie this whole conference up, but I’m very hopeful that doesn’t happen,” he said.
He said that instead of a legally binding deal, the world may have to focus on achievable targets including progress on climate aid, forests and putting into action nonbinding emissions pledges countries made last year in Copenhagen.
Kyoto binds almost 40 developed nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012 and commits parties to an extension. The US never ratified the protocol.
Carbon emissions trading markets want assurances of policies beyond 2012 to guide investments. The International Energy Agency says US$18 trillion needs to be spent by 2030 to ensure a shift from fossil fuels toward cleaner energies.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS