CLIMATE TALKS SLOWING, CHANGE SPEEDING UP

U.N. climate talks move slowly as new studies urge more dramatic emissions cuts
Juliet Eilperin, December 6, 2011 (Washington Post)

"…[A]s researchers warned that if nations don’t bolster their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions, much more costly reductions will be needed after 2020...[and with] just three days left in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Durban, South Africa, the major contributors to the world’s carbon output were divided over how to forge a more comprehensive approach to reducing emissions.

"The fundamental sticking point...is the same conflict that has dominated international negotiations for years: The existing global-warming treaty does not impose binding emissions cuts on some of the world’s top emitters, either because they were not originally bound or because they refused to ratify the agreement. Now, with the first commitment period of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol set to expire at the end of next year, delegates are wrangling over what sort of process should guide talks aimed at forging a new global warming treaty by 2020."

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"...[D]elegates are “stuck” on whether industrialized nations would adopt new climate targets under the Kyoto treaty starting in 2013 and what role the United States, China and India would play under a new climate framework...The European Union...[will] agree to a second round of emissions cuts only if the United States and major developing countries such as China and India sign on to a 'road map' that aims to forge a binding agreement on reductions by the end of the decade.

"Negotiators for China — which is the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter but is not obligated to make cuts under the Kyoto treaty — said publicly last weekend that they might be open to joining a legally binding treaty, but they have shown little willingness to make concessions in private sessions with other countries...American officials have emphasized that they want a better sense of what a binding agreement would look like before they sign off on a process to create one..."