U.S. climate envoy notes “difficult” global talks
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s top climate change negotiator on Thursday said international talks to cut carbon emissions were “difficult,” adding that the U.S. Senate must pass a domestic bill to fight global warming to give the talks a boost.
“Let me say bluntly that the tenor of negotiations in the formal UN track has been difficult,” said Todd Stern, Obama’s special envoy for climate change.
In prepared testimony to the House energy independence and global warming panel, Stern added, “Time is short and the negotiations have still too often foundered as a result of the … developed/developing country divide.”
The senior Republican on the committee, James Sensenbrenner, zeroed in on one developing country, China, complaining that negotiators are not insisting on enough progress from Beijing, which is becoming the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide pollutants.
While China would reduce its emissions growth rate under ideas being discussed, Sensenbrenner noted that overall U.S. carbon output would be required to drop.
That, Sensenbrenner said, “flunks the good-deal test by a long, long way.”
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Stern said that while a date for China’s emissions to hit a peak and then begin falling were not being negotiated, he said that “some time in the 2020s” was what some had in mind.
Stern told the committee that a “pivotal” component of an international climate change deal later this year will be steps various countries will take to help fund developing countries’ efforts to reduce carbon emissions and deal with flooding, droughts and other effects of global warming.
Senator John Kerry on Thursday also stressed that time is running short to work out an international climate agreement. Kerry, who is working with other lawmakers to write a U.S. climate change bill, said countries must begin nailing down some details at a G-20 meeting this month.
“It’s critical to try to come out of there with a stronger sense of what the real target is going to be and what the process is going to be going into Copenhagen,” Kerry said at an American Security Project event in Washington.
