Opposition from the US and at least two major allies is likely to scuttle attempts to include emission reduction targets in a "roadmap" for future global warming talks, analysts said yesterday, as a UN climate conference entered its crucial final week.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Nobel laureate Al Gore and other prominent figures will arrive on the resort island of Bali in the coming days to try to provide momentum toward finalizing a Bali Roadmap, which will eventually lead to a successor accord for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The draft negotiating text at the Bali talks noted the widely accepted view that industrial nations' emissions should be cut by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and that global emissions need to peak in the next 10 to 15 years and then be dramatically slashed to half of 2000 levels by the middle of the century.
Just including such numbers in the draft was expected to spark renewed debate, even though few delegates or environmentalists believe they will be in the final text. The US, Canada and Japan have made it clear they oppose Kyoto-like targets.
"This is the test to watch this week," said Jennifer Morgan, spokeswoman for Climate Action Network, which is representing all the environmental groups in Bali. "This will show you whether governments are serious or not, whether they support these types of emissions cuts."
The 1997 Kyoto pact, which was rejected by the US, commits three dozen industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gases by a relatively modest average of 5 percent below 1990 levels in the next five years.
Experts say a new deal will have to go further if the world wants to head off the potentially catastrophic impacts of rising temperatures, from collapsing ice sheets to worsening droughts, flooding and diseases.
The US said last week it would come up with its own plan to cut global-warming gases by the middle of next year and would not commit to mandatory caps in the coming days.
Many environmentalists say that with US presidential elections late next year, the best hope is that a new administration would agree to deepening cuts.
"Every single democratic candidate for president has embraced mandatory caps ... and expressed their willingness to immediately be part of the Kyoto discussions and try to find a successor agreement to Kyoto," said US Representative John Kerry, the unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, who arrived in Bali on Sunday. "There is a very significant commitment on our side to see progress in this area."
Kerry said individual US states and cities were starting to implement emission caps on their own.
China, which is increasingly turning to coal-powered electricity plants and factories to help fuel its booming economy, has insisted that the West take the lead in cutting emissions and says it will do its part.
Developing country delegates at the assembly, meanwhile, were urging wealthy countries to speed the transfer of climate-friendly technologies.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS