Just weeks before an international conference on climate change, the UN signaled on Monday it was scaling back expectations of reaching agreement on a new treaty to slow global warning.
Janos Pasztor, director of the secretary-general’s Climate Change Support Team, said “it’s hard to say how far the conference will be able to go” because the US Congress has not agreed on a climate bill, and industrialized nations have not agreed on targets to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions or funding to help developing countries limit their discharges.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made a new climate treaty his top priority, hosting a Sept. 22 summit on climate change to spur political support and traveling extensively to build political momentum for a global agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which only requires 37 industrialized nations to cut emissions.
Pasztor told a news conference “there is tremendous activity by governments in capitals and internationally to shape the outcome” of the climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in early December, which “is a good development” because political leadership is essential to make a deal.
But he indicated that Copenhagen most likely won’t produce a treaty, but instead will push governments as far as they can go on the content of an agreement.
“The secretary-general believes that we must maintain the political momentum established by the 101 heads of state and government who attended the climate change summit and continue to aim for an ambitious, politically binding agreement in Copenhagen that would chart the way for future post-Copenhagen negotiations that lead to a legally binding global agreement,” Pasztor said.
He said that there was still a final negotiating session in Barcelona, Spain, from Monday to Nov. 6 that will be followed by two more weeks of work in Copenhagen. The secretary-general is in close contact with the Danish prime minister and might go to the meeting of Asian and Pacific leaders in Singapore on Nov. 14-15 to keep pressing for a global accord in Copenhagen, Pasztor said.
US President Barack Obama attended the UN climate summit, and this week the Senate environment committee will take up its version of a global warming bill that would cut greenhouse gases by about 80 percent by 2050. But with work still to be done on healthcare and divisions in the US Congress over how to deal with climate change, chances the Senate will pass a climate bill by the end of the year are slim.
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