Posted 2:06 PM
by Mary
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The nonbinding Copenhagen Accord is at a critical moment that will decide whether it becomes a mandatory treaty for cutting greenhouse gases, the top U.S. climate official said Thursday.
It will only happen, Todd Stern told a gathering of Wall Street leaders and investors, if the "major players" provide the United Nations by the end of January with their promised plans for reducing carbon emissions by 2020.
'We have an accord that's kind of lumbering down the runway, and we need it to get enough speed so it can take off, the best way to make progress toward a legal agreement is to get the Copenhagen Accord implemented.'
Stern, the U.S. State Department's special envoy for climate change, struck a hopeful note about the uncertain outcome of the U.N. climate conference in the Danish capital in December, in his first public remarks since returning from Copenhagen.
The Copenhagen agreement fell short on specific steps to cool the planet, but urged deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the globe. It also set up the first significant program of climate aid to poorer nations and adopted a goal of holding the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius. A $30 billion fund over the next three years, scaling up to $100 billion a year by 2020, was a key element.
Labels: climate, copenhagen
Posted 7:30 PM
by Mary
Emerging nations join G-8 in climate declaration
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
RUSUTSU, Japan: Calling climate change "one of the great global challenges of our time," the world's richest nations and emerging powers joined together Wednesday for the first time to commit themselves to pursue long-range cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, but were split on how to achieve that goal.
The declaration grew out of an unprecedented meeting that brought together 16 nations and the European Union ? a group dubbed the "major economies" ? around the issue of global warning. The 16 are the Group of 8 industrialized nations: the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Britain and Russia; the Group of 5 emerging economies: China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa; and three other major trading nations: Australia, South Korea and Indonesia.
The session, organized by President George W. Bush, took place here on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido, where leaders of the Group of 8 wrapped up three days of meetings on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, leaders of the Group of 8 pledged to "move toward a carbon-free society" by cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases in half by 2050. But Group of 5 poorer countries refused to sign onto that goal. They are holding out until rich nations like the United States take more aggressive steps to cut pollution over the next decade.
That fissure prevented the 16 countries from "reaching any meaningful understanding" in the special Wednesday session, said one expert, Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. But an environmental campaigner, Phillip Clapp of the Pew Environmental Group, said the declaration helped set the stage for the next American president to grapple with climate change when the United Nations conducts negotiations on a binding treaty in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009.
"It is good that the developing countries have embraced the principal of a global target that they will participate in," Clapp said. "It would have been better if the United States and the other G-8 countries would have been willing to step up to the plate and make a strong commitment about what they would do over the next 10 years. "
Labels: climate, G-8
