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 Editorials | Environmental | April 2008 
World's Biggest Polluters Stumble Over Specific Emissions Cuts
 Associated Press
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Paris - Climate negotiators from the world's biggest polluters clashed Friday over how deeply to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases, but decided to hold new talks aimed at reaching an accord.
They also agreed on the enormity of their task.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, addressing the negotiators, warned that global warming is threatening food supplies
and risks sparking a dozen Darfur-like conflicts - involving displaced, starving populations - around the world.
A South African participant said unchecked global warming would cost the world a staggering US$200 billion a year to overcome, according to the meeting's co-chairman, Jean-Pierre Jouyet.
No fixed targets were set at the two-day Paris meetings, which were "dominated" by debate over how much to cut emissions of the gases that contribute to global warming, said Jouyet, France's junior minister for Europe.
"There were divergences" between the EU and U.S. positions, he said, without elaborating. The EU has pledged to cut its emissions by 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2020, while the United States has not committed to any fixed emissions cuts.
The so-called Major Economies Meetings bring together delegates from 16 countries that produce about 80 percent of the world's carbon emissions. They are feeding broader U.N. efforts to follow up the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires signatories to reduce emissions. The pact expires in 2012.
The major polluters meetings were launched last year by the United States - which rejected the Kyoto pact - with the goal of producing a climate agreement at the Group of Eight summit in Japan in July.
A key idea being floated is a 50 percent cut in global emissions by 2050.
Since this week's talks produced no fixed goals, the participants agreed to two more meetings, in May and June, Jouyet said. No dates or venues were given.
Participants described this week's talks - which ran several hours late into Friday night - as difficult, tense and lively.
The South African report of a US$200 billion annual cost for mitigating global warming sparked intense discussion about where to get all that money.
"The amount is so huge it is not a question of debating whether it is correct. What we need to do is make funds available immediately," said Koji Tsuruoka, director general for global issues at Japan's Foreign Ministry.
American, Japanese and French participants welcomed a Mexican proposal for a global fund, involving private and public money, focused on climate change.
The French president urged massive new flows of private investment to fight climate change and globally regulated "green" markets.
Sarkozy also noted that water shortages and rivalry for farmland and fishing resources are already "having a considerable impact on security," especially in Africa.
"In Darfur, we see this explosive mixture from the impact of climate change, which prompts emigration by increasingly impoverished people, which then has consequences in war."
More than 200,000 people have been killed in violence in Darfur and more than 2 million have fled their homes since ethnic African tribesman took up arms in early 2003, complaining of decades of neglect and discrimination. Sudan's Arab-dominated government has been accused of unleashing janjaweed militia forces to commit atrocities against ethnic African communities in the fight with rebel groups.
"If we continue in this direction, climate change will encourage migrations of populations who have nothing left toward territory where populations don't have much, and the Darfur crisis will be just one crisis among dozens of others," Sarkozy said.
Participants at the talks came from the United States, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. |
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