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Binding Treaty No Longer a Realistic Goal for Climate Summit, UN Chief Concedes
A legally binding agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions is no longer a realistic goal for next month's Copenhagen summit, the UN Secretary-General says.
According to Ban Ki Moon such an agreement will not be signed next month and the most likely outcome is voluntary targets, which countries could announce but then ignore.
He said that several key countries were not ready to sign up to binding targets and that the best the world could hope for from the summit would be "political commitments". Mr Ban said he hoped that they would be legally binding within a year but would be dependent on each country.
His comments, made in London, marked a significant retreat from the UN's previous plan for a new treaty to be signed at Copenhagen to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Mr Ban said: "It may be realistic if we think Copenhagen will not be the final word on all these matters. But if we agree on a strong politically binding commitment that will be, I think, a reasonable success. Then the post-Copenhagen negotiations will continue so that we have a legally binding agreement as soon as possible.
"Each and every country has their own domestic constraints when they go back - no country will be totally free, that is the difficulty. It is a very complex process including verification systems, targets and money. It is not an easy task. That is why I am saying Copenhagen is not the final word."
Mr Ban also said that developed nations would have to increase the amount that they paid to poorer countries to help them to adapt to climate change. Asked whether he believed that the European Union's proposal of a fund of up to $50 billion of public money a year would be sufficient, he said: "As we go into the future, I think that should be scaled up."
He said that generous funding needed to be agreed to build trust among developing countries, which have accused richer nations of creating climate change but leaving them to face the consequences. "We should admit that there are some suspicions and distrust, particularly on the part of developing countries."
He also suggested that the global target for limiting the temperature increase to 2C above pre-industrial levels might have to be adjusted because it could still result in sea-level rises inundating many small islands. "These small-island developing countries say that it should be a maximum of 1.5C. For them it's a matter of life and death."
Mr Ban said that he was working closely with members of the US Senate, which is debating proposed legislation on cutting carbon dioxide emissions. He also suggested that President Obama and other world leaders needed to be present at the end of the Copenhagen summit to ensure an ambitious political agreement. "The urgency and importance of the work requires political leadership. I would expect many leaders will come."
Mr Ban was speaking as 50 African countries boycotted UN meetings on climate change in Barcelona. They accused developed nations of settingweak targets for cutting emissions. The African countries said that they would not discuss how developing countries could reduce their emissions until there were more stretching commitments from richer nations. "I don't think we can get to a result in the way we're going now," said Kamel Djemouai, the Algerian negotiator who chairs the Africa group.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that developed countries should reduce emissions by 25 to 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, but the targets announced have fallen short.
Anders Turesson, the chief delegate from Sweden, which holds the EU presidency, said that while EU leaders shared the Africans' concern about the low level of pledges, their tactic of limiting the discussion to emission targets was unproductive.
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21 Comments so far
Show AllAnyone else find themselves wishing to be king for a month? I would give you one thousand severed CEO heads and a sustainable economy for our species to continue into the future.
Yep, there are definitely business and political elites who need to be publicly executed to get the attention of the rest. We'd see a LOT of the survivors suddenly cash out and retire for 'health reasons'.
But, y'know, the worst offenders, the ones whose pathology is more advanced, STILL wouldn't get it. Even as they were led to the scaffold they'd be demanding to be let go and indignantly claiming that what they did to us and the world was perfectly legal.
That may end up being the result. Things may get so bad that somebody just takes control and orders draconian measures, because at times it looks like nothing will change without them.
This is tantamount to watching a fuse slowly burning and heading toward dynamite sitting in your house but deciding to go to work instead...where the money is.
A closer analogy would be seeing the burning fuse leading to the explosives duct-taped to your child's chest as they are forcibly restrained with cable ties, police handcuffs and shackles to a chair bolted down in a wash tub full of gasoline, and still driving off to work at your Wall Street investment banking job in your SUV, all the while thinking that Rush Limbaugh is right on the money, and seeing every single child in your entire city having the same experience.
Very nice simile!
As Diamond found, most elites are so unbalanced mentally that they're willing to kill us all as long as they can be the last to die. Which fits with J.K.Galbraith's assessment that the elites would rather risk absolutely everything than give up even part of their ill-got privilege.
I found it interesting, too, that even Spinoza in the 17th century recognised greed as a pathology rather than the sin that religions considered it.
We need to band together and give the elites the push.
Thank you to all the climate change deniers, their corporate backed think tanks, cherry-picked (if not totally fabricated) 'research' and out right lies.
Thank you for denying all of the evidence. Thank you for ignoring and downplaying the massive decline of glaciers and ice packs worldwide. Thank you for ignoring the massively agreed upon increases in CO2 that match the rise of industrial society. Thank you for ignoring the thousands of atmospheric and climate scientists who are 99.99% in agreement that humans are responsible for the change in atmospheric composition in the past 150 years.
Thank you for condemning millions of people living in coastal areas to massive displacement, disease and death. Thank you for the greatest extinction event of animal life since the passing of the dinosaurs. Thank you for the extreme weather that will destroy thousands of lives, and billions of dollars worth of property. Thank you for the coming starvation of millions as croplands become deserts.
Thank you for your childish demands, those of you in the US especially, that you not be held accountable for your actions. Thank you for using even more sources of greenhouse gasses. Thank you for refusing to adopt alternative energy sources. Thank you for not having a spine, and allowing corporations to dictate that profit is more important than human life and dignity.
Thank you for your profound, proud, defiant and willful ignorance.
May all of you climate change deniers have a long, drawn out death of lingering discomfort and suffering.
Because that is what you have condemned the entire world and all it's life to.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of them die prematurely due to mob-related causes before then.
Just as long as they suffer.
I highly recommend everyone, especially all elected and non-elected officials, watch the new film on climate change called 'The Age of Stupid'. The best film by far.
Whoever said 'take the average IQ and divide by the number of people to get the IQ of the mob' might not have been thinking of dividing by six billion, but as a species we behave exactly as cleverly as bacteria in a sealed bowl of food. Some of us still feel that the gift of consciousness requires us to rise beyond blindly eating, breeding and excreting ourselves out of existence. What I most fear now is silent eco-nihilism among the powerful. If there is to be no future, there is no reason to be remembered for good deeds.
You know, you honestly can't blame these people, anyone in the same position would do exactly the same thing. The problem lies with society as a whole, as most people share the same ambitions as the elite. The only way to fix the problem is to re-structure the way people think and society acts, but since that wont happen, we will just keep repeating the same cycle until extinction, or the (slight) chance we evolve.
oh, so now the climate change "deniers" (holocaust anybody)are the ones backed by corporate think tanks?
350.org was founded and payed for by Rockefeller money.
Club of Rome were the first ones to push for a global government by getting people to rally around a common cause, in which they agreed a form of environmentalism was the best way to do so.
why dont you do some research and see which basket Rand Corporation & the CFR have placed their eggs.
what utter nonsense, Al Gore stand to become the first "carbon billionaire" but hes just trying to save the planet and not make a buck or two. riiight.
now climate change is a "spiritual" challenge and the science doesnt matter. you people dont even realize your being duped. you just put faith in your leaders to do whats best and you just trot along as if you all know what your talking about. there is no evidence of anthropogenic global warming (which is now climate change) in the fossil record. stop getting your news from corporate backed lackeys. look to see what scientists have been silenced and not funded because they refuse to go along with this political junk science.
Gilgamesh, I find it interesting that you have given yourself the name of the legendary Babylonian hero. Did you know that Babylon was one of the richest and most fertile areas of the world until its people decimated their environment and turned it into a desert?
Gilgamesh was also condemned by the gods to suffer extreme longevity so he could watch all he had known crumble into dust.
There's enough evidence to convince at least some historians that it was the Mongols in the 13th c. who laid waste to Mesopotamia by destroying its irrigation system, not the locals.
Mesopotamia was already desert by the time the Huns and Mongols decided to go around them.
So damaging local and small scale irrigation systems would have had little impact in the 13th century.
At the time of Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia was renowned for lush cedar forests,some of which Gilgamesh proudly claimed the responsibility of complete clear cutting, which led to the curse of Humbaba, condemning Gilgamesh to kill his best friend, the wild man Enkidu.
Big deal about funders, so what? Bill McKibben, a credible guy if you've read any of his stuff(or Jim Hansen for that matter, who chronicles pretty clearly his problem dealing with presidents scuttling research publication) is hardly a self-serving or more importantly misguided guy on the corporate payroll. 350.org is a hugh educational/lobbying effort that should get the funding it needs, from what I see.
Do any of these naysayers have children? Are they crazy- to willingly ruin their children's and grandchildren's futures? I mean I've heard of self-absorption, but this takes the cake.
When has a treaty ever been binding to the US anyway?