US CLIMATE TALKS MUST FOCUS ON EMISSIONS CURBS - UN
01.30.08 - Leído 68 veces. Enviar esta notaAlister Doyle
US-hosted climate talks in Hawaii this week need to focus more on agreeing curbs to greenhouse gas emissions by major polluters, the UN’s top climate change official said on Tuesday
OSLO, Norway; January 30, 2008.- The debate on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, which come mainly from burning fossil fuels, needed “to move into a higher gear” if the talks were to produce a plan this year, the United Nations’ Yvo de Boer said of the Jan. 30-31 meeting in Honolulu.
“The talks have got a quite broad agenda at the moment…I think it would be useful if they can zero in quite quickly on limits on emissions,” de Boer told Reuters in a phone interview just before leaving for the United States.
The Honolulu talks are the second in a series viewed with suspicion by some US allies, who doubt President George W. Bush’s commitment to combating global warming.
Last year, in announcing meetings among the 16 biggest emitters, Bush said participants would develop by the end of 2008 a “long-term global goal to reduce greenhouse gases,” including “ambitious mid-term national targets”.
Bush said the decisions would then feed into a global UN deal, due to be concluded in Copenhagen in late 2009, to help slow rising temperatures that could bring more floods, droughts, rising seas and heatwaves.
Still, de Boer said it was hard for Bush, who will stand down on Jan. 20 next year, to set a US carbon emissions goal now as “there is a lot of legislation still moving through the Senate and the Congress.”
De Boer says the US meetings, which were also due to cover issues such as technology and aid, could be useful — even though the United States is alone among industrial nations in opposing caps on emissions to 2012 by the UN’s Kyoto Protocol.
Bush argues that Kyoto wrongly excludes 2012 targets for developing nations such as China and India and would damage the US economy. The United States and China are the top emitters of greenhouse gases.
The Hawaii talks are due to gather representatives from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and South Korea. De Boer will represent the United Nations and the European Union will also be represented.
In his annual State of the Union address on Monday, Bush proposed investments of US$2 billion over the next three years to a new international fund to promote clean energy technologies and fight climate change in developing nations.
De Boer welcomed US funding steps, and a US$10 billion package by Japan last week to help emerging countries tackle climate change without jeopardising growth.
He said that they helped a need for a “Climate Change Marshall Plan” to help developing nations. The original US Marshall plan aided Europe’s shattered economies after World War Two. “We need something similar on climate,” de Boer said.
(Reuters)
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