Australia fears rising temperatures will trigger more intense bushfires and greater extremes of droughts and floods, threatening crops and livelihoods. It says all major greenhouse gas emitters should sign up to legally binding steps to reduce emissions.
"This is one of those situations where we're all in it," Australian Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told Reuters in an interview.
Draft U.N. climate text at climate talks in Copenhagen says the world should halve emissions by 2050, with rich nations making the largest portion of cuts.
The text only mentions that big developing nation emitters should take aspirational steps to curb the output of planet-warming gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, language many rich nations say is unacceptable.
"That text is a reflection of where negotiators have got to but it's a long way from what we need and a long way from what we need to be working with," Wong said.
Australia, among the world's highest per-capita carbon emitters, says it will offer cash to help the developing world cope with climate change. It plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions between 5 and 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020.
Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are meeting in Copenhagen during Dec 7-18 talks to try to finalize what hosts Denmark hopes will be a political agreement that ramps up the fight against climate warming.
More than 110 world leaders descend on Copenhagen next week to attend a summit to try to clinch a deal on deeper emissions cuts by rich nations, steps by developing nations their carbon pollution and finance to help the poor adapt to climate change.
The United Nations has said a full, legal treaty to expand or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol is out of reach at the talks after two years of troubled negotiations and is likely to be agreed some time in 2010.
Wong said it was crucial ministers and world leaders give the talks a stronger focus and that it was time to overcome the entrenched positions of a few people.
"Fundamentally what we need now is political ownership of these negotiations. This can no longer be about just one or two people putting a particular position that they've put for the past two years."
Host Denmark has given Australia a special role at the talks to try to help get an agreement.
"My view is very much that we need the key issues that are beyond agreement, beyond the possibility of agreement at the official level, being elevated to ministers and then to leaders.
She said agreeing on a global deal to limit the average rise in global temperatures to 2 degree Celsius needed participation from all major emitters.
"We're not going to get that unless we're able to expand the circle, expand the number of countries who are prepared to put actions on the table, who are prepared to come into an international arrangement."
Sunday, December 13, 2009
ADB chief says climate finance insufficient
ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda also told Reuters in an interview that if governments were to fail to reach a climate deal in Copenhagen, it could lead to a collapse of the carbon market which would hit efforts to deal with climate change.
Rich and poor nations differ over how much the developed world should pay to help developing economies combat or cope with climate change.
"Whatever is agreed in this process, financing is really key -- financing for mitigation as well as adaptation efforts to be done particularly by developing countries," Kuroda said during a one-day break in 190-nation negotiations in the Danish capital.
"If meaningful financing arrangements are agreed, that would facilitate the core agreement on greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, threshold or benchmark by the international community, which would be absolutely necessary to stabilize climate change at the latest by 2015," he said.
Kuroda said many different figures had been mentioned of the need for financing for a climate deal ranging anywhere from $10 billion to $100 billion.
"At this stage the figures committed by the developed world are still insufficient and must be substantially increased over the years to come," Kuroda said, but did not give a figure for how high it needed to rise.
The bank's Japanese president said that the European Union's pledge of 7.3 billion euros over three years was "a significant first" toward a global financing deal.
ADAPTATION MONEY
Financing is needed, he said, especially for developing countries' adaptation measures which are not so "automatically financed" as mitigation efforts which benefit from funds generated by the cap-and-trade system.
Mitigation means curbing greenhouse gas emissions while adaptation comprises efforts to cope with climate change by widely ranging means from flood defenses to development of drought-resistant crops and disease control.
"Some Asian countries are going to be disproportionately affected by climate change," he said, mentioning Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Pacific islands as vulnerable to sea rises, typhoons, cyclones and other weather phenomena.
"Many of them are low-income countries, and the adaptation costs are huge," he said. "So the international community must provide adequate support for those severely affected and low-income countries."
Kuroda said it was the role of the multilateral development banks, including his Manila-headquartered ADB, to assist governments in the process, though the banks are not directly involved in the Copenhagen negotiations. Kuroda said failure by governments to reach a new accord on climate measures extending beyond the Kyoto Protocol period ending in 2012 could have grave repercussions.
"If there is no agreement post-Kyoto, then the carbon market would collapse," he said. "That would cause great damage to the global effort to reduce effort to reduce GHG emissions
Rich and poor nations differ over how much the developed world should pay to help developing economies combat or cope with climate change.
"Whatever is agreed in this process, financing is really key -- financing for mitigation as well as adaptation efforts to be done particularly by developing countries," Kuroda said during a one-day break in 190-nation negotiations in the Danish capital.
"If meaningful financing arrangements are agreed, that would facilitate the core agreement on greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, threshold or benchmark by the international community, which would be absolutely necessary to stabilize climate change at the latest by 2015," he said.
Kuroda said many different figures had been mentioned of the need for financing for a climate deal ranging anywhere from $10 billion to $100 billion.
"At this stage the figures committed by the developed world are still insufficient and must be substantially increased over the years to come," Kuroda said, but did not give a figure for how high it needed to rise.
The bank's Japanese president said that the European Union's pledge of 7.3 billion euros over three years was "a significant first" toward a global financing deal.
ADAPTATION MONEY
Financing is needed, he said, especially for developing countries' adaptation measures which are not so "automatically financed" as mitigation efforts which benefit from funds generated by the cap-and-trade system.
Mitigation means curbing greenhouse gas emissions while adaptation comprises efforts to cope with climate change by widely ranging means from flood defenses to development of drought-resistant crops and disease control.
"Some Asian countries are going to be disproportionately affected by climate change," he said, mentioning Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Pacific islands as vulnerable to sea rises, typhoons, cyclones and other weather phenomena.
"Many of them are low-income countries, and the adaptation costs are huge," he said. "So the international community must provide adequate support for those severely affected and low-income countries."
Kuroda said it was the role of the multilateral development banks, including his Manila-headquartered ADB, to assist governments in the process, though the banks are not directly involved in the Copenhagen negotiations. Kuroda said failure by governments to reach a new accord on climate measures extending beyond the Kyoto Protocol period ending in 2012 could have grave repercussions.
"If there is no agreement post-Kyoto, then the carbon market would collapse," he said. "That would cause great damage to the global effort to reduce effort to reduce GHG emissions
Indian farmers adapt to shifting weather patterns
For decades, people of Uttar Pradesh, whose population is more than half that of the United States, have been witnessing erratic weather, including increasingly intense rainfall over short periods of time.
The rain, combined with heavy mountain run-off from nearby Nepal, which is also seeing heavier-than-usual rains, has inundated villages, towns and cities in the region.
Such floods have destroyed homes, crops and livestock, highlighting the fact that the poorest in countries such as China and India are most at risk from climate change.
While world leaders in Copenhagen argue over who should cut carbon emissions and who should pay, experts say low-cost adaptation methods, partly based on existing community knowledge, could be used to help vulnerable farmers.
In the fields of Manoharchak village, where terms such as "global warming" are unknown, such experiments are bearing fruit, changing the lives of poor farmers who outsmart nature using simple but effective techniques to deal with rising climate variability.
"For the last three years, we have been trying to change our ways to cope with the changing weather," said Hooblal Chauhan, a farmer whose efforts have included diversifying production from wheat and rice to incorporate a wide variety of vegetables.
"I don't know what those big people in foreign countries can do about the weather, but we are doing what we can to help ourselves," said the 55-year-old from Manoharchak, situated 90 km (55 miles) north of the bustling city of Gorakhpur.
IMPROVISATION
Villagers here have raised the level of their roads, built homes with foundations up to 10 feet above ground, elevated community handpumps and created new drainage channels.
Supported by the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group -- a research and advocacy group -- farmers are also planting more flood-tolerant rice, giving them two harvests a year where they once had one, and diversifying from traditional crops to vegetables such as peas, spinach, tomatoes, onions and potatoes.
The diversity of crops, they say, is particularly beneficial when their wheat and rice fail. And the vegetables give them not only a more varied and nutritional diet, but also help in earning an income when excesses are sold.
Increasingly, intense rain means farmers in the region also have to contend with silt deposition from long periods of water-logging in their farms.
But 50-year-old widow Sumitra Chauhan, who grows about 15 different vegetables as well as rice and wheat on her two-acre plot, says she has learned ways to overcome the problem.
"We plant our (vegetable) seedlings in the nurseries and then when the water drains, we transfer them to the land so there are no delays," she said, standing in her lush green plot packed with vegetables including mustard, peas, spinach and tomatoes.
CLIMATE REFUGEES
Farmers have also started using "multi-tier cropping" where vegetables like bottle gourd and bitter gourd are grown on platforms raised about 5-6 feet above the ground and supported by a bamboo frame.
Once the water-logged soil drains, farmers can plant the ground beneath the platforms with vegetables and herbs such as spinach, radish and coriander.
Warmer temperatures and an unusual lack of rain during monsoon periods in eastern Uttar Pradesh have also led to dry spells. To cope, villagers have contributed to buying water pumps for irrigation, lowering their dependence on rain.
According to Oxfam, which is supporting the action group's work in Uttar Pradesh, millions of people in India have been affected by climate-related problems.
Some have been forced into debt. Others have migrated to towns and cities to search for manual labor or have had to sell assets such as livestock to cope.
"It is true that developing countries need a lot of investment to adapt to the effects of climate change, but small and marginal farmers, who are some of India's poorest, can make a start by using simple, cheap techniques to help themselves," said Ekta Bartarya of the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group.
The rain, combined with heavy mountain run-off from nearby Nepal, which is also seeing heavier-than-usual rains, has inundated villages, towns and cities in the region.
Such floods have destroyed homes, crops and livestock, highlighting the fact that the poorest in countries such as China and India are most at risk from climate change.
While world leaders in Copenhagen argue over who should cut carbon emissions and who should pay, experts say low-cost adaptation methods, partly based on existing community knowledge, could be used to help vulnerable farmers.
In the fields of Manoharchak village, where terms such as "global warming" are unknown, such experiments are bearing fruit, changing the lives of poor farmers who outsmart nature using simple but effective techniques to deal with rising climate variability.
"For the last three years, we have been trying to change our ways to cope with the changing weather," said Hooblal Chauhan, a farmer whose efforts have included diversifying production from wheat and rice to incorporate a wide variety of vegetables.
"I don't know what those big people in foreign countries can do about the weather, but we are doing what we can to help ourselves," said the 55-year-old from Manoharchak, situated 90 km (55 miles) north of the bustling city of Gorakhpur.
IMPROVISATION
Villagers here have raised the level of their roads, built homes with foundations up to 10 feet above ground, elevated community handpumps and created new drainage channels.
Supported by the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group -- a research and advocacy group -- farmers are also planting more flood-tolerant rice, giving them two harvests a year where they once had one, and diversifying from traditional crops to vegetables such as peas, spinach, tomatoes, onions and potatoes.
The diversity of crops, they say, is particularly beneficial when their wheat and rice fail. And the vegetables give them not only a more varied and nutritional diet, but also help in earning an income when excesses are sold.
Increasingly, intense rain means farmers in the region also have to contend with silt deposition from long periods of water-logging in their farms.
But 50-year-old widow Sumitra Chauhan, who grows about 15 different vegetables as well as rice and wheat on her two-acre plot, says she has learned ways to overcome the problem.
"We plant our (vegetable) seedlings in the nurseries and then when the water drains, we transfer them to the land so there are no delays," she said, standing in her lush green plot packed with vegetables including mustard, peas, spinach and tomatoes.
CLIMATE REFUGEES
Farmers have also started using "multi-tier cropping" where vegetables like bottle gourd and bitter gourd are grown on platforms raised about 5-6 feet above the ground and supported by a bamboo frame.
Once the water-logged soil drains, farmers can plant the ground beneath the platforms with vegetables and herbs such as spinach, radish and coriander.
Warmer temperatures and an unusual lack of rain during monsoon periods in eastern Uttar Pradesh have also led to dry spells. To cope, villagers have contributed to buying water pumps for irrigation, lowering their dependence on rain.
According to Oxfam, which is supporting the action group's work in Uttar Pradesh, millions of people in India have been affected by climate-related problems.
Some have been forced into debt. Others have migrated to towns and cities to search for manual labor or have had to sell assets such as livestock to cope.
"It is true that developing countries need a lot of investment to adapt to the effects of climate change, but small and marginal farmers, who are some of India's poorest, can make a start by using simple, cheap techniques to help themselves," said Ekta Bartarya of the Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group.
Environment ministers try to unlock climate deal
Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, highlighting a spat between top greenhouse gas emitters China and the United States, said he hoped all nations would seek to raise their offers in the talks.
"China is calling on the United States to do more. The United States is calling on China to do more. I hope that in the coming days everyone will call on everyone to do more," he said.
The ministers were holding informal talks during a one-day break in the December 7-18 meeting involving 190 nations, which will culminate in a summit of world leaders on Thursday and Friday including U.S. President Barack Obama.
"There are still many challenges. There are still many unsolved problems," Danish Minister Connie Hedegaard told reporters. "But as ministers start to arrive there is also the political will."
The talks bring together representatives from rich and poor nations who have been arguing over who is responsible for emissions cuts, how deep they should be, and who should stump up cash to pay for them.
Countries like China and India say the industrialized world must make sharper reductions in greenhouse gas output and provide the poor with more cash to fund a shift to greener growth and adapt to a warmer world.
"An agreement is certainly possible. If all of us trust each other and if we have the courage and conviction, we can still come to a fair, equitable deal in Copenhagen," Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said, heading into Sunday's sessions.
Richer countries say the developing world's carbon emissions are growing so fast they must sign up for curbs to prevent dangerous levels of warming.
China has said it wants to wrap up a firm deal before Premier Wen Jiabao joins other world leaders at the summit.
"My understanding is that the leaders are coming to celebrate the good outcome of the talks," senior Chinese envoy Su Wei said on Saturday.
DEMONSTRATORS RELEASED
On Sunday, South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu handed over to the U.N.'s de Boer tens of thousands of signatures from around the world calling for climate action.
An afternoon church service was also planned at Copenhagen's Cathedral, with a sermon by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and attended by Danish royalty, followed by a "bell ringing for the climate" in churches around the world.
Police have released all but 13 of nearly 1,000 people detained after a march on Saturday, a police spokesman said.
The march by tens of thousands of people was largely peaceful but violence erupted toward evening when demonstrators smashed windows and set fire to cars.
Some of those detained said they were unfairly held and badly treated by police.
"They arrested us for no reason. We were all peaceful," said Hana Nelson, aged 24, a student from Halifax, Canada, who was released without charges
"China is calling on the United States to do more. The United States is calling on China to do more. I hope that in the coming days everyone will call on everyone to do more," he said.
The ministers were holding informal talks during a one-day break in the December 7-18 meeting involving 190 nations, which will culminate in a summit of world leaders on Thursday and Friday including U.S. President Barack Obama.
"There are still many challenges. There are still many unsolved problems," Danish Minister Connie Hedegaard told reporters. "But as ministers start to arrive there is also the political will."
The talks bring together representatives from rich and poor nations who have been arguing over who is responsible for emissions cuts, how deep they should be, and who should stump up cash to pay for them.
Countries like China and India say the industrialized world must make sharper reductions in greenhouse gas output and provide the poor with more cash to fund a shift to greener growth and adapt to a warmer world.
"An agreement is certainly possible. If all of us trust each other and if we have the courage and conviction, we can still come to a fair, equitable deal in Copenhagen," Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said, heading into Sunday's sessions.
Richer countries say the developing world's carbon emissions are growing so fast they must sign up for curbs to prevent dangerous levels of warming.
China has said it wants to wrap up a firm deal before Premier Wen Jiabao joins other world leaders at the summit.
"My understanding is that the leaders are coming to celebrate the good outcome of the talks," senior Chinese envoy Su Wei said on Saturday.
DEMONSTRATORS RELEASED
On Sunday, South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu handed over to the U.N.'s de Boer tens of thousands of signatures from around the world calling for climate action.
An afternoon church service was also planned at Copenhagen's Cathedral, with a sermon by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and attended by Danish royalty, followed by a "bell ringing for the climate" in churches around the world.
Police have released all but 13 of nearly 1,000 people detained after a march on Saturday, a police spokesman said.
The march by tens of thousands of people was largely peaceful but violence erupted toward evening when demonstrators smashed windows and set fire to cars.
Some of those detained said they were unfairly held and badly treated by police.
"They arrested us for no reason. We were all peaceful," said Hana Nelson, aged 24, a student from Halifax, Canada, who was released without charges
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Climate talks to go closed doors, or over dinner
If a climate deal is to be done, it is more likely to be thrashed out over coffee in the corridor, a glass of wine at dinner or a stroll along Copenhagen's cobbled downtown streets than in the vast conference hall.
Personal chemistry and friendships among opposing delegates are critical in complex negotiations, and could be particularly crucial this weekend when ministers from key countries try to break through the deadlocks in talks on a global accord to control greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.
The ministers were coming earlier than planned to prepare the ground for a summit of 110 leaders at the end of the week. The aim is to tie up a political deal laying the outlines of a new climate change pact that will be finished next year.
The Copenhagen conference caps two years of negotiations among 192 countries. They have convened for formal talks nearly a dozen times, usually getting nowhere. But their leaders or top negotiators have met even more often in informal settings — touring a South African wildlife park, walking on an Argentinian glacier or relaxing near the fjords of Greenland.
Those weeks of relaxed conversations, discussions of families and hobbies alongside climate issues and public policy, swapping suits for jeans, are invaluable in building relationships and trust that can translate in the future into diplomatic breakthroughs.
Two of the bitterest foes in the negotiations, U.S. special envoy Todd Stern and Chinese negotiator Xie Zhenhua are known to meet regularly and cordially, even though they communicate through an interpreter.
"He's a very personable guy," Barbara Finamore, China program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says of Xie. She says the two men have an understanding that goes deeper than their public positions.
The Copenhagen conference, like all U.N. climate talks before, are conducted on many levels, from the open assemblies attended by all nations to small rooms where a few delegates haggle in quiet.
Public negotiating sessions often are contentious rounds of finger-pointing couched in diplomatic niceties. Poor countries say they will be the first to suffer from global warming caused by the rich industrial world. Wealthy nations say developing countries are not doing enough to help solve the problem.
The nations are grouped in various alliances with common interests, the largest known as the G-77 plus China which actually is comprised of some 135 countries. The G-77 is joined by the European Union, the Small Island States, the Least Developed Countries and the Umbrella Group, which lumps the United States with Australia, Canada and Japan.
It's a convenient way to save time and repetition, with an appointed spokesman stating an agreed position at the opening or closing of a plenary.
The plenary sessions are not for negotiation. It's where nations stake out positions, posture for their home constituency and show allegiance to their allies. Delegates say most of the progress is hammered out behind the scenes.
"The more intimate the setting, the easier it is to talk," said Jurgen Lefevere, a veteran European climate negotiator. "It's amazing how much depends on who bumps into who in the corridor."
Plenary sessions break up into smaller "contact groups" to deal with specific issues. When talks bog down, the chairman may assign a "friend of the chair" to pull the key players into a side room and thrash it out. If that fails, the problem will be put aside for later. If it's a major issue, it will wait be passed up to the ministers or heads of government.
The formal and informal streams reinforce each other, Lefevere said.
In smaller groups negotiators can probe, parry and question. They explore how far the other side can relent and where the threshold of pain is, said Lefevere, a Belgian diplomat representing the European Commission.
One-on-one contact can be over coffee at the conference center or over a glass of wine and a good dinner.
This is when delegates exchange hard information or privately swap internal documents and proposals, Lefevere said. "You get the nuances and subtleties that you can't convey in a big meeting."
But even with friends, he said, "you have to be careful how to show the bottom line."
Personal chemistry and friendships among opposing delegates are critical in complex negotiations, and could be particularly crucial this weekend when ministers from key countries try to break through the deadlocks in talks on a global accord to control greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.
The ministers were coming earlier than planned to prepare the ground for a summit of 110 leaders at the end of the week. The aim is to tie up a political deal laying the outlines of a new climate change pact that will be finished next year.
The Copenhagen conference caps two years of negotiations among 192 countries. They have convened for formal talks nearly a dozen times, usually getting nowhere. But their leaders or top negotiators have met even more often in informal settings — touring a South African wildlife park, walking on an Argentinian glacier or relaxing near the fjords of Greenland.
Those weeks of relaxed conversations, discussions of families and hobbies alongside climate issues and public policy, swapping suits for jeans, are invaluable in building relationships and trust that can translate in the future into diplomatic breakthroughs.
Two of the bitterest foes in the negotiations, U.S. special envoy Todd Stern and Chinese negotiator Xie Zhenhua are known to meet regularly and cordially, even though they communicate through an interpreter.
"He's a very personable guy," Barbara Finamore, China program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says of Xie. She says the two men have an understanding that goes deeper than their public positions.
The Copenhagen conference, like all U.N. climate talks before, are conducted on many levels, from the open assemblies attended by all nations to small rooms where a few delegates haggle in quiet.
Public negotiating sessions often are contentious rounds of finger-pointing couched in diplomatic niceties. Poor countries say they will be the first to suffer from global warming caused by the rich industrial world. Wealthy nations say developing countries are not doing enough to help solve the problem.
The nations are grouped in various alliances with common interests, the largest known as the G-77 plus China which actually is comprised of some 135 countries. The G-77 is joined by the European Union, the Small Island States, the Least Developed Countries and the Umbrella Group, which lumps the United States with Australia, Canada and Japan.
It's a convenient way to save time and repetition, with an appointed spokesman stating an agreed position at the opening or closing of a plenary.
The plenary sessions are not for negotiation. It's where nations stake out positions, posture for their home constituency and show allegiance to their allies. Delegates say most of the progress is hammered out behind the scenes.
"The more intimate the setting, the easier it is to talk," said Jurgen Lefevere, a veteran European climate negotiator. "It's amazing how much depends on who bumps into who in the corridor."
Plenary sessions break up into smaller "contact groups" to deal with specific issues. When talks bog down, the chairman may assign a "friend of the chair" to pull the key players into a side room and thrash it out. If that fails, the problem will be put aside for later. If it's a major issue, it will wait be passed up to the ministers or heads of government.
The formal and informal streams reinforce each other, Lefevere said.
In smaller groups negotiators can probe, parry and question. They explore how far the other side can relent and where the threshold of pain is, said Lefevere, a Belgian diplomat representing the European Commission.
One-on-one contact can be over coffee at the conference center or over a glass of wine and a good dinner.
This is when delegates exchange hard information or privately swap internal documents and proposals, Lefevere said. "You get the nuances and subtleties that you can't convey in a big meeting."
But even with friends, he said, "you have to be careful how to show the bottom line."
How real is US climate of change?
Accepting his Nobel Peace Prize last Thursday, US President Barack Obama urged leaders to confront climate change. But will he deliver at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen? Caroline Muscat put the question to US Ambassador to Malta Douglas Kmiec.
His charm and persuasive abilities not only won Mr Obama the US Presidency, it drew back to America admiration from a world increasingly hostile towards the foreign policies of George W. Bush.
A global issue the former president ignored was climate change - a challenge the US Ambassador says President Obama has now taken on. But the road ahead is full of potholes.
"We've been slow to come to the table... but now we're unequivocal in our understanding that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed thoroughly and equitably with respect to all of the nations in the world," says Mr Kmiec.
He adds the President is prepared to seek a legally binding agreement and will urge that upon the leaders present in Copenhagen. At a minimum, President Obama will seek immediate operational steps.
But the package the US has presented at Copenhagen was less than expected from the country that has the highest level of CO2 emissions per capita, and therefore the biggest contributor to climate change. Developing countries, which are already feeling the effects of global warming, say the US must carry its historical responsibility.
Mr Kmiec accepts the country's contribution to the problem: "Yes, the US is largely responsible for a great deal of greenhouse gases in the world that have led to this consequence. We have to own up to that."
Mr Obama offered "provisional" targets for emissions cuts - less than four per cent of what US emissions were in 1990, to be achieved by 2020. By comparison, within the same timeframe, the EU has committed to reducing its emissions by a minimum of 20 per cent, Britain alone pledging a 34 per cent cut, while Japan has promised a 25 per cent reduction.
Mr Kmiec thinks the US's long-term projections are comparable to those of other rich nations. The positions are much closer now than they were under the previous US administration, he says.
The US pledges have still to pass the test at the Senate to gain legislative force and the Senate remains deeply divided on the issue but the Ambassador is confident the US President's persuasive abilities will see it through.
He describes the US commitment on climate change as "realistic". The US has adopted a leadership position now but it is "also a position that recognises that we're not alone, that all of the developing nations have rather important and specific obligations that they need to meet, and the developed nations have an obligation to the developing world to mitigate the cost that we've already imposed on the environment".
Poor countries will be the first and hardest hit and the ones least able to cope with the effects of climate change, even if their contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming is negligible. But the promises by rich nations to fund efforts to adapt to climate change have only empty coffers to show. The poorest countries have received the least help from the rich, an analysis by The Guardian revealed.
And the US is being accused of not putting its money where its mouth is - the EU chief climate negotiator said in Copenhagen last Monday that an adaptation fund set up in 2001 had yet to receive a deposit from the US.
When this is put to the country's ambassador, he points to another US commitment to contribute to a $10 billion fund "to get things started". Whether the US will offer more depends on what others will do, Mr Kmiec adds.
"Much of this money will be borrowed from China, and if China is going to be on a path of focusing on economic growth alone, without consideration of environmental responsibility, that's a different question than if China itself is making commitments to environmental targets that are consistent with those the US is making."
China's counter argument is that its contribution to the problem is not equal to that of the US. But the US Ambassador insists China has to redirect some of its robust economic system towards a meaningful environmental target.
The US will give its proportion, Mr Kmiec says, while he admits the Iraq war was a drain on US resources, calling the $10-13 billion-a-month effort "massively wasted expenditure".
By comparison, "the expenditures involved (on climate change) are expenditures in building up, or at least maintaining, the quality of the human environment... that's quite the opposite, in my judgment, of the war on Iraq".
The change in attitude has been recognised internationally. Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Obama, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples", has been seen as a means of boosting international climate talks.
It remains to be seen whether, in Copenhagen, the rhetoric will be replaced by the political will necessary to turn promises into action and prevent the human suffering that climate change is already inflicting.
His charm and persuasive abilities not only won Mr Obama the US Presidency, it drew back to America admiration from a world increasingly hostile towards the foreign policies of George W. Bush.
A global issue the former president ignored was climate change - a challenge the US Ambassador says President Obama has now taken on. But the road ahead is full of potholes.
"We've been slow to come to the table... but now we're unequivocal in our understanding that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed thoroughly and equitably with respect to all of the nations in the world," says Mr Kmiec.
He adds the President is prepared to seek a legally binding agreement and will urge that upon the leaders present in Copenhagen. At a minimum, President Obama will seek immediate operational steps.
But the package the US has presented at Copenhagen was less than expected from the country that has the highest level of CO2 emissions per capita, and therefore the biggest contributor to climate change. Developing countries, which are already feeling the effects of global warming, say the US must carry its historical responsibility.
Mr Kmiec accepts the country's contribution to the problem: "Yes, the US is largely responsible for a great deal of greenhouse gases in the world that have led to this consequence. We have to own up to that."
Mr Obama offered "provisional" targets for emissions cuts - less than four per cent of what US emissions were in 1990, to be achieved by 2020. By comparison, within the same timeframe, the EU has committed to reducing its emissions by a minimum of 20 per cent, Britain alone pledging a 34 per cent cut, while Japan has promised a 25 per cent reduction.
Mr Kmiec thinks the US's long-term projections are comparable to those of other rich nations. The positions are much closer now than they were under the previous US administration, he says.
The US pledges have still to pass the test at the Senate to gain legislative force and the Senate remains deeply divided on the issue but the Ambassador is confident the US President's persuasive abilities will see it through.
He describes the US commitment on climate change as "realistic". The US has adopted a leadership position now but it is "also a position that recognises that we're not alone, that all of the developing nations have rather important and specific obligations that they need to meet, and the developed nations have an obligation to the developing world to mitigate the cost that we've already imposed on the environment".
Poor countries will be the first and hardest hit and the ones least able to cope with the effects of climate change, even if their contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming is negligible. But the promises by rich nations to fund efforts to adapt to climate change have only empty coffers to show. The poorest countries have received the least help from the rich, an analysis by The Guardian revealed.
And the US is being accused of not putting its money where its mouth is - the EU chief climate negotiator said in Copenhagen last Monday that an adaptation fund set up in 2001 had yet to receive a deposit from the US.
When this is put to the country's ambassador, he points to another US commitment to contribute to a $10 billion fund "to get things started". Whether the US will offer more depends on what others will do, Mr Kmiec adds.
"Much of this money will be borrowed from China, and if China is going to be on a path of focusing on economic growth alone, without consideration of environmental responsibility, that's a different question than if China itself is making commitments to environmental targets that are consistent with those the US is making."
China's counter argument is that its contribution to the problem is not equal to that of the US. But the US Ambassador insists China has to redirect some of its robust economic system towards a meaningful environmental target.
The US will give its proportion, Mr Kmiec says, while he admits the Iraq war was a drain on US resources, calling the $10-13 billion-a-month effort "massively wasted expenditure".
By comparison, "the expenditures involved (on climate change) are expenditures in building up, or at least maintaining, the quality of the human environment... that's quite the opposite, in my judgment, of the war on Iraq".
The change in attitude has been recognised internationally. Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Obama, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples", has been seen as a means of boosting international climate talks.
It remains to be seen whether, in Copenhagen, the rhetoric will be replaced by the political will necessary to turn promises into action and prevent the human suffering that climate change is already inflicting.
Businesspeople join the ranks of climate treaty proponents
From the legions of environmental Cassandras gathered here for international climate negotiations, an unlikely batch of advocates has emerged to champion a new global warming agreement: businesspeople.
Corporate leaders, the rarest of commodities at the first climate talks nearly two decades ago, have staked a claim to the title of biggest player in Copenhagen aside from the official negotiators.
They have blanketed the host Bella Center with company logos and glossy brochures touting business efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. An army of chief executives descended on the conference Friday to urge the assembled government officials to curb emissions and unleash a new wave of so-called clean energy investment. On Sunday, Coca-Cola will co-host a business round table here with the World Wildlife Fund.
Some of the executives, including major players in the utility and technology sectors, see massive profit potential in a worldwide shift away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar and other low-emission energy sources.
Other companies say they are looking for uniformity in the increasingly global economy, where major markets, such as Europe, limit emissions but the United States and most of Asia do not.
Government leaders here say the increased corporate engagement has given new urgency to the negotiations and improved the chances of averting what scientists say could be the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
"This climate problem is too big, and the need for investment is too great, for government to do it alone," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told an overflow crowd Friday.
The big-business side to the talks has angered some climate activists, who decry "green capitalism" and call for massive wealth transfers from the richest nations to developing countries struggling to cope with climate change. One speech Friday at Klimaforum09, a parallel gathering of environmentalists, was titled "Global Warming: the Capitalist Catastrophe and the Eco-Socialist Alternative."
And though increasingly vocal, business leaders remain somewhat divided on climate policy, with groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging "realism" on global efforts and opposing emission limits pending before Congress. Several economic studies funded by business groups have warned this year that emission limits would saddle U.S. companies with higher energy costs, stunting growth.
The chamber said in a news release Friday that its message to climate delegates is "businesses are committed to continuing to improve their environmental stewardship to address climate change . . . [but] any agreement must not undermine economic competitiveness or shed jobs."
When international leaders gathered for the first time in Rio de Janeiro in 1991 to discuss global warming, only a few corporate chiefs joined them, said Norine Kennedy, vice president for energy and environmental affairs at the U.S. Council for International Business. This week, hundreds and perhaps thousands of executives made the trip to Copenhagen.
"Our thinking has evolved as the treaty has evolved, as it has grown into new areas," said Kennedy, whose group represents 300 companies and is pushing for a more active business role in climate negotiations. "We see a larger and larger range of companies -- not just in terms of their sectors, but sizes and nationalities -- participating."
The shift stems from a combination of responsibility and opportunity, said several of the executives who swung through the conference to lobby for an agreement.
"What has changed in the last 10 years is that businesses have understood that to be sustainable is a must, and there is no future without concern for the environment," said Philippe Joubert, president of Paris-based Alstom Power, which operates power plants around the globe and recently opened the world's first pilot-scale plant for capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions from coal.
Joubert and several other business leaders in Copenhagen said they want the climate talks to yield long-term rules that will set a price on greenhouse gas emissions.
The sentiment, oddly enough, echoes the consensus of oil and gas executives who gathered for a conference in Houston early this year.
"There's one point which the whole energy sector agrees upon, which is the need to make a decision on the future price of carbon," said Peter Brun, senior vice president for government relations at Vestas, the Danish wind company whose blue logo graces the giant turbine spinning outside the Bella Center.
Companies are also watching closely to see whether various pledges to reduce emissions could, at least in the short run, change the dynamics of global supply chains -- by, say, making energy sufficiently cheaper in Cambodia than in China to attract manufacturing across borders.
U.S. companies have raised the issues of energy costs and competitiveness with Locke, the Commerce secretary.
He sat Friday morning for an hourlong chat -- over water, no coffee -- with representatives of Intel, Microsoft, GE, FedEx and two dozen other companies. Locke said the conversation revolved around the opportunities of emission reduction.
If the world keeps cutting emissions and the United States does not follow suit, Locke said the executives told him, those companies "will establish plants in other countries to meet their changing [energy] needs."
Corporate leaders, the rarest of commodities at the first climate talks nearly two decades ago, have staked a claim to the title of biggest player in Copenhagen aside from the official negotiators.
They have blanketed the host Bella Center with company logos and glossy brochures touting business efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. An army of chief executives descended on the conference Friday to urge the assembled government officials to curb emissions and unleash a new wave of so-called clean energy investment. On Sunday, Coca-Cola will co-host a business round table here with the World Wildlife Fund.
Some of the executives, including major players in the utility and technology sectors, see massive profit potential in a worldwide shift away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar and other low-emission energy sources.
Other companies say they are looking for uniformity in the increasingly global economy, where major markets, such as Europe, limit emissions but the United States and most of Asia do not.
Government leaders here say the increased corporate engagement has given new urgency to the negotiations and improved the chances of averting what scientists say could be the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
"This climate problem is too big, and the need for investment is too great, for government to do it alone," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told an overflow crowd Friday.
The big-business side to the talks has angered some climate activists, who decry "green capitalism" and call for massive wealth transfers from the richest nations to developing countries struggling to cope with climate change. One speech Friday at Klimaforum09, a parallel gathering of environmentalists, was titled "Global Warming: the Capitalist Catastrophe and the Eco-Socialist Alternative."
And though increasingly vocal, business leaders remain somewhat divided on climate policy, with groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging "realism" on global efforts and opposing emission limits pending before Congress. Several economic studies funded by business groups have warned this year that emission limits would saddle U.S. companies with higher energy costs, stunting growth.
The chamber said in a news release Friday that its message to climate delegates is "businesses are committed to continuing to improve their environmental stewardship to address climate change . . . [but] any agreement must not undermine economic competitiveness or shed jobs."
When international leaders gathered for the first time in Rio de Janeiro in 1991 to discuss global warming, only a few corporate chiefs joined them, said Norine Kennedy, vice president for energy and environmental affairs at the U.S. Council for International Business. This week, hundreds and perhaps thousands of executives made the trip to Copenhagen.
"Our thinking has evolved as the treaty has evolved, as it has grown into new areas," said Kennedy, whose group represents 300 companies and is pushing for a more active business role in climate negotiations. "We see a larger and larger range of companies -- not just in terms of their sectors, but sizes and nationalities -- participating."
The shift stems from a combination of responsibility and opportunity, said several of the executives who swung through the conference to lobby for an agreement.
"What has changed in the last 10 years is that businesses have understood that to be sustainable is a must, and there is no future without concern for the environment," said Philippe Joubert, president of Paris-based Alstom Power, which operates power plants around the globe and recently opened the world's first pilot-scale plant for capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions from coal.
Joubert and several other business leaders in Copenhagen said they want the climate talks to yield long-term rules that will set a price on greenhouse gas emissions.
The sentiment, oddly enough, echoes the consensus of oil and gas executives who gathered for a conference in Houston early this year.
"There's one point which the whole energy sector agrees upon, which is the need to make a decision on the future price of carbon," said Peter Brun, senior vice president for government relations at Vestas, the Danish wind company whose blue logo graces the giant turbine spinning outside the Bella Center.
Companies are also watching closely to see whether various pledges to reduce emissions could, at least in the short run, change the dynamics of global supply chains -- by, say, making energy sufficiently cheaper in Cambodia than in China to attract manufacturing across borders.
U.S. companies have raised the issues of energy costs and competitiveness with Locke, the Commerce secretary.
He sat Friday morning for an hourlong chat -- over water, no coffee -- with representatives of Intel, Microsoft, GE, FedEx and two dozen other companies. Locke said the conversation revolved around the opportunities of emission reduction.
If the world keeps cutting emissions and the United States does not follow suit, Locke said the executives told him, those companies "will establish plants in other countries to meet their changing [energy] needs."
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