World leaders lay groundwork for post-Kyoto carbon controls

By Chris Cermak Sep 25, 2007, 8:13 GMT

Vice Chairman of the Greater China World Trade Centers Annie Wu speaks during a high-level climate change meeting at the United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York, New York, USA, on 24 September 2007. EPA/SHAWN THEW

New York - There is no doubt that industrial nations, who built their economies on the back of pollutants now known to be warming the planned, are responsible for climate change up until now.

But when more than 80 world leaders this week tackled the issue of what future action should be taken against global warming, the blame game seemed to at least partially be put aside.

Of the more than 150 speakers who addressed a one-day conference on climate change Monday at the United Nations, most acknowledged the need for some 'global' solution if global warming is to reduced and its already existing effects dealt with.

That solution will be needed well before the 2012 expiration of the Kyoto Protocol - the world's first attempt to place global caps on carbon-dioxide emissions.

A deal will be needed by the end of 2009 to give countries a realistic chance to ratify any new treaty in time. A planned December conference in Bali, Indonesia is mean to forge the path for talks toward that goal.

In effect since 2005, the Kyoto treaty was never ratified by the United States and did not include developing countries. But with the latter increasingly making their own contributions to the problem - China is currently the second-largest carbon emitter behind the US - most speakers Monday recognized that both sides have a shared responsibility for their own futures.

'This event has sent a powerful signal to the world and to the Bali conference that there is the will and the determination at the highest level to break with the past and act decisively,' UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in summing up the conference.

That doesn't mean each country should do an equal amount: poorer countries said they would need increased financial aid and technology sharing to not only reduce their own emissions, but to combat the effects of global warming that are already underway.

Emanuel Mori, president of the Federated States of Micronesia, offered a stark example of the growing effects, telling the General Assembly that global warming is already causing damage to the islands' agriculture and fishing, to marine and land species and to coral reefs.

'The sad reality is that small island developing states can only do so much to improve their resilience against the impacts of climate change,' Mori said.

Most industrial nations said they were ready to bear the burden of reducing their own emissions while helping developing countries build their economies on cleaner alternatives.

'It is not a question of choice between growth and protecting our world,' said French President Nicolas Sarkozy. 'We need clean growth. A new economy must be invented.'

While European leaders said they were committed to reducing emissions, the United States focussed on new technologies as the way forward and made little mention of mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases or of a global carbon-trading scheme supported by other leaders as a means of spurring those new technologies.

US President George W Bush was notably absent from the conference until the evening, when he attended a dinner hosted by Ban for a select group of world leaders.

In his place, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States recognized the 'urgent challenge that climate change poses' and was prepared to participate 'actively' in the UN conference in Bali but made no commitments on capping emissions.

Just how much each country should be forced to cap their emissions, and whether developing countries should have specific limits forced on them at all, will be at the heart of the intense debate that begins in Bali over a post-Kyoto agreement.

'The controversy between industrial and developing countries (is) that we all of a sudden say, now that we have a problem, that you must jump the same height as us,' Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa this weekend.

'If the industrial nations can show these countries that they are prepared to make reductions ... that will of course make it easier for developing countries to make a contribution to the international talks,' Steiner said.

Ban on Monday said it was 'encouraging to hear' the leaders of richer countries talk of 'deeper emission reductions' while the developing world 'acknowledged that they need to take action to limit growth in emissions.'

Environmental lobby group Greenpeace urged: 'Just do it.'