NO SIGN OF US CARBON TRADING CONSENSUS - WATSON
08.31.07 - Leído 66 veces. Enviar esta notaAlister Doyle
It will be very difficult to reach agreement on a carbon market for the United States as there is no sign of consensus between regional schemes, the US chief climate negotiator said on Wednesday
VIENNA, Austria; August 31, 2007.- “It’s under active consideration in our Congress,” Harlan Watson told a news conference during a 158-nation meeting of government experts in Vienna, when asked about the prospects for a national market linking up initiatives by some US states.
“We are very far from consensus on a national programme,” he added. “It’s certainly going to be very difficult to reach a consensus. I don’t want to make a judgment about what Congress might do.”
He also said that the United States had no plans to join in any global market for trading emissions of greenhouse gases as part of a fight against climate change.
“Right now, we do not see our participation in a global carbon market. It’s unclear when and where and if there’s going to a global carbon market,” he said.
He noted the European Union emissions trading scheme and plans for trading in nations such as Australia and Canada.
“You are seeing difference among these schemes. So knitting these together in a global carbon market is going to take some time,” he said.
US PRAISES DEVELOPING NATIONS’ CLIMATE CURBS
Chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson also played down conflicts with the European Union over the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, saying there were more areas of agreement than disagreement between the two over global warming policy.
Environmentalists said the US seemed eager at climate talks in Vienna to smooth the way towards a meeting called by President George W. Bush among major emitters on Sept. 27-28 in Washington to work out new greenhouse gas curbs.
“There is an…opinion from the outside that developing countries are not doing anything, which is a totally false impression,” Watson told a news conference during the Aug. 27-31 meeting of 1,000 officials from 158 nations.
“Developing countries are taking action, their emissions are growing, but they are taking action which is going to have significant impact,” he said.
President George W. Bush has said that developing nations such as China and India must do more to fight global warming if Washington is going to join any new global deal beyond 2012 when a first phase of the Kyoto Protocol runs out.
Bush decided in 2001 not to join his main industrial allies in ratifying Kyoto, saying it would cost too much and wrongly excluded 2012 targets for developing nations led by China and India.
CONCILIATORY
The EU and other Kyoto backers view the pact as a first binding step to fight warming, that could bring more heatwaves, floods, spread disease, disrupt farming and raise sea levels.
“It’s unusual that (Watson) is saying that developing countries are acting,” said Gustavo Silva-Chavez of Environmental Defense.
“He was very conciliatory,” said Hans Verolme, climate expert for the WWF environmental group. He said developing nations, led by China and India, wanted signs that their efforts were appreciated before attending the Washington talks, which are meant to work out new climate goals by the end of 2008.
China, for instance, says it is acting with plans to improve its industrial energy efficiency by 20 percent in the next five and step up recycling even as it opens coal-fired power plants at a rate of two a week.
Bush says his talks among major economies, including other top emitters led by China, the European Union, Russia, India and Japan, will aim to work out curbs beyond 2012 by the end of 2008 and then support a global UN deal in 2009.
“There are a lot more areas of agreement between the EU and the US than disagreement,” Watson said.
He noted disagreement with the EU over Kyoto, which binds 35 nations to cut greenhouse gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 but said the two were cooperating on areas such as technology, environmental research and nuclear reactors.
MANKIND TO BLAME FOR WARMING BUT CAN SLOW DAMAGE - UN
Underlining the need for speed, it says a European Union goal of holding temperature rises to a maximum 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times is almost out of reach.
The 21-page study, due for release in November, lays out possible responses to global warming but cautions that some impacts are already inevitable, such as a gradual rise in sea levels that is set to last for centuries.
The report gives a first overview of 3,000 pages of research by the UN’s climate panel already published in three instalments this year about the science, the likely impacts and the costs of slowing climate change.
The authoritative summary, obtained by Reuters and meant to guide governments in working out how to slow warming, reiterates that humans are to blame for climate change but that clean technologies are available to offset the most harmful emissions.
“Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (from human activities) greenhouse gas concentrations,” it says.
“Very likely” means at least 90 percent probability, up from 66 percent in a previous report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 when the link was only judged “likely”. The IPCC draws on work by 2,500 scientists.
The report shows a table indicating worsening damage such as bleached corals, coastal flooding, increasing costs of treating disease, deaths from heatwaves and rising risks of extinctions of species of animals and plants.
But it says: “Many impacts can be avoided, reduced or delayed” by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
FOSSIL FUELS
Among options to offset warming, blamed mainly on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are energy efficiency, wider use of renewable energies, carbon markets or burying carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants.
The report indicates that the cost of such initiatives would be manageable for the world economy.
Global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030 would be reduced by up to 3 percent in the most stringent case that would require emissions to peak within about 15 years. Other less tough goals would mean only a fractional loss of GDP by 2030.
The report will be issued in Valencia, Spain, on Nov. 17 after review by governments, along with an even shorter 5-page summary. The draft is dated May 15 — an updated version has been written this month to take account of government suggestions, scientists said.
“Warming of the climate is now unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global mean sea level,” the summary begins.
The report reiterates best estimates that temperatures will rise by 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius (3 to 7 Fahrenheit) this century and that sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres.
But it says ocean levels are likely to keep rising “for many centuries” even if greenhouse gases are stabilised, because water expands as it heats up. The deep oceans will keep heating up as warmth filters down from the surface.
Under a range of scenarios, such thermal expansion of the oceans alone would bring sea level rises of 0.4 to 3.7 metres in coming centuries, without counting any melting of ice in glaciers or in the vast Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets.
About 1,000 delegates from 158 nations are meeting in Vienna this week to discuss ways to extend the UN’s Kyoto Protocol for fighting warming beyond 2012 and to widen it to include outsiders such as the United States and developing nations.
(Reuters)
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