Major players find little consensus on combatting global warming

By Pat Reber Nov 24, 2011, 9:47 GMT

Washington - With just days left until annual UN climate talks open Monday in Durban, South Africa, major players still disagree on how best to combat global warming.

Last week's gathering of climate envoys from 23 countries in Arlington, Virginia for informal talks found general consensus on the main goal of reducing carbon emissions, according to a summary of the meeting released Wednesday.

'There was broad agreement that mitigation efforts are at the core of our collective goal of keeping temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius,' according to the document released by the State Department's office of climate change.

But that goal has already been agreed on at two previous summits in Cancun and Copenhagen.

With the Kyoto Protocol expiring in December 2012, the main issues in Durban are whether it will be extended and whether and when the United States, China and other countries not covered by Kyoto will inch their way to a broader global agreement.

After last week's meeting, it appeared there was no new consensus on those issues, according to the summary. The United States has said it doesn't see a broader treaty until after 2020, when current informal pledges to reduce emissions expire.

Other countries, led by the European Union, insist that Durban must produce commitments by major emitters like the US and China to future talks about legally binding reductions before they extend Kyoto. And they want talks to begin soon, at the latest by 2015, when the next round of scientific reports on global warming is expected.

The United States tries to put the best face on its absence from the Kyoto accord, and regards informal commitments made in 2009 and 2010 by 100 countries to reduce emissions as a global agreement.

'I get asked all the time ... when we're going to finally reach an agreement ... and I always say the same thing, which is we reached an agreement. We reached it last year in Cancun,' Todd Stern, the chief US climate envoy, told reporters on Tuesday.

The Cancun agreement also called for setting up a Green Climate Fund, expected to generate 100 billion dollars in public and private investments by 2020 to help developing countries mitigate emissions and adapt to warming.

The gathering last week expressed 'strong support' for making the fund operational in Durban, as well as for reaching agreement on another element of the Cancun accord - how countries measure and report their emissions.

More than 190 countries agreed in 2009 and 2010 that temperatures must not rise more than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by 2100. With carbon emissions at an all-time high, temperatures could increase more than 4 degrees by 2100 on the current course. Scientists say that would cause major flooding, extensive drought, rising sea levels from polar melt and massive consequences for humanity.