U.S. Sets High Bar for Post-2020 Climate Accord, Stern Says
November 21, 2011, 6:29 AM ESTBy Kim Chipman and Jim Efstathiou Jr.
Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Climate-change deals reached at a United Nations meeting starting this month may be “completely silent” about how to combat global warming after 2020, the U.S. climate envoy said.
“It’s not self-evident that you need to talk about that at all,” Todd Stern, President Barack Obama’s lead climate negotiator, told reporters yesterday at a briefing in Arlington, Virginia.
While the U.S. isn’t part of the 1997 emissions-cutting Kyoto Protocol, portions of which took effect in 2005 and expire next year, the nation’s view on how to forge a replacement treaty may affect whether the current accord is extended through 2020.
UN negotiations on both fronts start Nov. 28 in Durban, South Africa, when more than 190 countries will debate how to proceed after failing in Copenhagen in 2009 to reach a legally binding agreement. Talks have stalled while rich and developing nations try to sort out their differences.
Stern has said a binding climate accord “isn’t in the cards” in Durban because big emitters such as China and India won’t commit to it. The U.S. rejected Kyoto because it aligns major economies such as China with smaller developing nations in a group that isn’t required to cut emissions.
European Union Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has said the 27-nation bloc will try to get envoys in Durban to agree on a road map leading to a climate treaty with mandates by 2015.
Extending Kyoto
The EU won’t commit to a new set of targets under Kyoto unless nations including China, the world’s biggest greenhouse- gas emitter, the U.S., the second biggest, and other polluters agree on a pathway to a binding treaty, she told reporters Nov. 3 in Brussels.
Stern said he believes the EU is willing to “do something” on Kyoto, though “the exact nature of the thing isn’t clear yet.”
Nations including Japan, Russia and Canada have said they don’t want to extend Kyoto targets for the second commitment period. Their reluctance, along with that of the U.S. and China, would leave the Kyoto agreement without targets for the five biggest national emitters of pollution from burning fossil fuels.
“Durban is very likely to be dominated by debates on that highly contentious issue of a second commitment period,” Robert Stavins, director of Harvard University’s Environmental Economics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said yesterday in an interview.
Cancun Accord
Talks in Durban also will focus on implementing a nonbinding agreement reached in Cancun, Mexico, last year by the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas polluters, including the U.S. and China. Stern said the Cancun accord is what will set the world’s climate agenda through 2020.
That agreement calls for forest protection, methods to verify countries’ cuts in fossil-fuel emissions and a $100- billion-a-year fund to help poor nations minimize climate change.
Stern, speaking after a two-day meeting of the world’s biggest emitters, said that there’s still “significant negotiation going on” regarding climate finance and transparency issues.
--With assistance from Ewa Krukowska in Brussels and Alex Morales in London. Editors: Judy Pasternak, Steve Geimann
To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Chipman in Washington at kchipman@bloomberg.net; Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York at jefstathiou@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at LLiebert@bloomberg.net
