by Agence France-Presse
U.S. climate envoy Todd SternWASHINGTON – The lead U.S. climate negotiator said Tuesday it was politically unrealistic for the next treaty to impose global targets for emission cuts, amid deep divisions between rich and developing nations.
Special envoy Todd Stern said a better model was the “bottom-up architecture” proposed by Australia during last year’s Copenhagen summit, in which each nation submits details of its own actions to the United Nations.
“No across-the-board, top-down target would be acceptable at this stage to most developing countries and, indeed, it would not work well for us either,” Stern said at The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
“The notion that you’re going to negotiate some across-the-board target with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa and many other countries … is not that likely.”
Over 190 nations are negotiating a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol to fight climate change, which U.N. scientists warn could bring growing disasters and threaten entire species if left unchecked.
The Kyoto Protocol had set a target of industrialized nations cutting emissions blamed for global warming by an average of 5 percent by the end of 2012 from 1990 levels, with a corresponding figure calculated for each country. The United States was the only major nation to reject the treaty, arguing it was unfair because it made no demands of fast-growing emerging economies such as China—now the top carbon emitter.
President Barack Obama reversed course when taking office by seeking action on climate change.
But Stern, who helped negotiate Kyoto under former president Bill Clinton, said he was mindful of the political lessons from that experience.
“We sort of came into this with a sense that the way we did Kyoto didn’t work so well,” Stern said. “We negotiated the target in Kyoto not only before there was any law, but before there was any foundation of domestic support” for legislation, he added.
The U.S. Senate just last week took up a bill that would set up the first nationwide plan to curb carbon emissions, although individual states have taken similar initiatives.
“It is enormously important for our international leverage and credibility that we pass strong legislation,” Stern said. “If the United States means to assert leadership, it needs to act like a leader.”
Yet he cautioned that the roadblocks to reaching a final agreement “wouldn’t disappear” even if the United States approved climate-change legislation.
China and other major developing nations have argued that wealthy countries bear historic responsibility for climate change and have balked at any legally binding targets, particularly without firmer U.S. action.
India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said on a visit to Beijing earlier this month that prospects for a breakthrough in time for the next major climate meeting in December were “very, very remote.” Ramesh said talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun may produce a political statement expanding on the Copenhagen accord but would not yield an agreement.
The Copenhagen Accord calls for nations to work together to stave off warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels.
But voluntary pledges registered under the deal put the Earth on track for increases of 3.5 to 4.0 degrees Celsius (6.3 to 7.2 Fahrenheit).
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