Original source URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/world/16climate.html December 16, 2007 Nations Set Timetable to Revive Climate Treaty By THOMAS FULLER and ANDREW C. REVKIN NUSA DUA, Indonesia ‹ Delegates from nearly 190 countries wrapped up two weeks of intense and at times emotional talks here on Saturday with a two-year timetable for reviving an ailing, aging climate treaty. The deal came after the United States, facing sharp verbal attacks in a final open-door negotiating session, reversed its opposition to a last-minute amendment by India. "We've listened very closely to many of our colleagues here during these two weeks, but especially to what has been said in this hall today," Paula Dobriansky, who led the U.S. delegation, told the other assembled delegates. "We will go forward and join consensus." The Bush administration had earlier made a significant change in policy, ending its long-held objection to formal negotiations on new steps to avoid climate dangers. This time, the United States agreed to set a deadline for an addendum to the original treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed by President George H.W. Bush during his final year in office in 1992 but never ratified by the United States. The agreement notes the need for "urgency" in addressing climate change and recognizes that "deep cuts in global emissions will be required." Still, it does not bind the United States or any country to commitments on reducing greenhouse pollution. "It starts a negotiation that allows but doesn't require an outcome where the U.S. takes a cap," or a national limit on greenhouse gases, said David Doniger, a former climate negotiator in the Clinton administration and the climate policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private Washington-based environmental group. The agreement sets the stage for some commitments by developing countries to reducing greenhouse emissions. But it includes no language making such steps mandatory. U.S. negotiators here had pushed hard to get developing countries, including emerging economic giants like China and India, to agree to seek cuts while retaining flexibility on how to make them. The last-minute dispute Saturday was over the wording of commitments by developing countries. The overall agreement, if completed by 2009, would also ensure continuity for parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which took effect in 2005 and is the only existing addendum to the original climate treaty. The Kyoto pact limits emissions by three dozen industrialized countries but has been rejected by the United States under President George W. Bush. Its emissions caps expire in 2012, and adherents, particularly European countries, were eager to start the process of setting new limits to sustain markets in emissions credits ‹ a keystone of the protocol. The carbon market allows rich countries to receive credit toward their targets by investing in climate-friendly projects in poor countries. The Bush administration is increasingly under pressure domestically to take action on global warming. Climate legislation is gaining momentum in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress, and presidential candidates from both parties are generally more engaged on the subject. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's contention that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant and ordered it to re-examine the case for regulating carbon dioxide from vehicles ordered it to review its environmental policies. Dozens of states are moving ahead with caps on greenhouse gases. The differences in philosophy at the meeting were striking and fundamental. European Union negotiators said they favored specific government-imposed caps on emissions and wanted industrial countries to lead the way. The United States favored relying on "aspirational" goals, research to advance nonpolluting energy technologies and a mix of measures, including mandatory steps like efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances ‹ but all set by individual nations, not mandated by a global pact. Developing countries, a vaguely defined group that includes countries as different as China and Costa Rica, have long insisted that rich countries, which spent more than a century adding carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, should take the first step. The tenor of the conference improved markedly after European nations, frustrated with the United States, threatened on Thursday to boycott talks proposed by the Bush administration in Hawaii next month that would be separate from process here, sponsored by the United Nations. Germany's environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, who led the criticism of the United States earlier in the week, said Friday: "The climate in the climate convention has changed a little bit. It's true that during the last night and during the negotiations America was more flexible than in the first part of the conference. We very much appreciate this. Not only the Americans but also other parties." Reuters reported Friday that the European Union had dropped a central demand that the guidelines for the agreement should include a reference to tough emissions targets for wealthy countries to meet by 2020. The mood here shifted after a speech Thursday by Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president who shared the Nobel Peace Prize this year for helping to alert the world to the danger of global warming. After declaring that the United States was "principally responsible for obstructing progress" in Bali, he urged delegates to agree to an open-ended deal that could be enhanced after Mr. Bush left office in January 2009. "Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now," Mr. Gore said to loud applause. "You must anticipate that." Developing nations, notably China and India, stuck with their longstanding refusal to accept limits on their emissions, despite projections that they will soon become the dominant sources of climate-warming gases. Separately, participants agreed on a system that would compensate developing countries for protecting their rain forests, a plan that environmentalists described as an innovative effort to mitigate global warming. Rain forest destruction is a major source of carbon dioxide, and living rain forests, according to recent research, play an important role in absorbing the gas. Precisely how countries with large rain forests, like Indonesia and Brazil, would be compensated has not been fully worked out. United Nations officials said part of the financing would come from developed countries through aid and other financing would come from carbon credits traded under the Kyoto pact. Thomas Fuller reported from Nusa Dua, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York. Peter Gelling contributed reporting from Nusa Dua, and Graham Bowley from New York. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company -- -------------------------------------------------------- Posting archives: http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?lists=newslog Escaping the Matrix website: http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website: http://cyberjournal.org How We the People can change the world: http://governourselves.blogspot.com/ Community Democracy Framework: http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html Moderator: •••@••.••• (comments welcome)
