Ban sees UN climate summit, calls for 'Green New Deal'

Simon Sturdee Yahoo News 11 Dec 08;

POZNAN, Poland (AFP) – UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday said he may stage a summit to spur a treaty on climate change as he called for a "Green New Deal" that would both curb global warming and salvage the world economy.

"I'm considering convening a summit-level meeting focussed on climate change at the time of the General Assembly in September," the UN secretary general told reporters on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Poznan.

Holding the summit would depend on progress in talks to craft a worldwide pact, by December 2009, for stopping the juggernaut of global warming, he indicated.

In a speech earlier, Ban said the world needed "a Green New Deal."

"This is a deal that works for all nations, rich as well as poor. Let us save ourselves from catastrophe and usher in a truly sustainable world."

He argued that "a big part" of the massive stimulus to solve the economic crisis should be devoted to investing in a low-carbon economy -- "an investment that fights climate change, creates millions of green jobs and spurs green growth".

Ban made the keynote speech to start a two-day ministerial level meeting in Poznan, Poland, which wraps up 12 days of talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

He praised new environmental plans by China and US president-elect Barack Obama and appealed to heads of the European Union (EU), locking horns over their own climate pact, to show "leadership".

Negotiations among the 192-member UNFCCC are mid-way through the two-year "roadmap" set down on the Indonesian island of Bali last year.

In Poznan, the talks are meant to provide the outlines of a negotiation blueprint. Throughout 2009, further haggling will take place with the aim of fleshing out a deal that can be signed in Copenhagen next December.

But the more than 11,500 delegates in Poland kept a worried eye on Thursday on events in Brussels, where EU leaders were hunkered down on the first day of a two-day summit tasked with forging the bloc's own climate pact.

The EU programme sets down the most ambitious goals of any advanced economy, including 20 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, increased use of renewable energy sources and overall energy savings.

But several countries are playing tough, most notably those in the former Soviet bloc that are highly dependent on heavily polluting coal power, as well as Germany and Italy worried about the loss of jobs.

The envisioned Copenhagen treaty will amount to an action plan for curbing greenhouse gases and channelling help for vulnerable countries beyond 2012, when current provisions expire under the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol.

It is designed to be the most complex and far-reaching environment deal ever struck -- as it has to be, scientists say.

Studies say climate change is happening and its eventual impact may be even worse than thought, creating human misery on a massive scale as deserts expand, sea levels rise and extreme weather becomes more and more frequent.

But cobbling together a global deal is a tall order, with the complex discussions in Poznan centered on how to share out the commitments and costs of cutting the carbon pollution that stokes global warming.

Rich countries acknowledge their historic role in pushing up global temperatures but they say emerging powers like China and India must also take action.

Developing and poorer nations hit back with the argument that the industrialised world should lead by example, and foot the bill for clean-energy technology and coping with the impact of global warming.

Delegates have complained that making progress in Poznan is difficult while the world waits for Barack Obama to take office as US president on January 20.

But Senator John Kerry, present in Poznan and tasked with reporting back to Obama, said that the United States was "determined to rejoin the world community" on climate change and would lead by example with mandatory emissions caps.

"The way to meet the goal in Copenhagen is to have heads of state pick up this challenge and attempt to meet it. I am confident that president-elect Obama intends to do that," Kerry said.

U.N. Chief Tells World: We Need A Green New Deal
Gabriela Baczynska and Megan Rowling, Reuters 12 Dec 08;

POZNAN - The world must avoid backsliding in fighting global warming and work out a "Green New Deal" to fix its twin climate and economic crises, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday.

"We must re-commit ourselves to the urgency of our cause," Ban told a December 1-12 meeting of 100 environment ministers in Poznan, Poland, reviewing progress toward a new U.N. climate treaty meant to be agreed at the end of 2009.

"The financial crisis cannot be an excuse for inaction or for backsliding on your commitments," he told ministers. The climate crisis "affects our potential prosperity and peoples' lives, both now and far into the future."

Ban called for leadership from U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and from the European Union. An EU summit ending on Friday will try to break deadlock in the bloc over a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by a fifth by 2020, compared to 1990.

And Ban called for a modern, global environmental equivalent of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's 1930s "New Deal," which lifted the United States out of the Great Depression.

"We need a Green New Deal," Ban declared.

Coping with the financial crisis would need a "massive stimulus," he added. "A big part of that spending should be an investment -- an investment in a green future."

The U.N. Climate Panel says global warming from greenhouse gases, mainly generated from burning fossil fuels, will cause more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

The Poznan talks are the halfway mark of a two-year push to work out a global pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. pact binding 37 nations to reduce emissions by about 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

Ban also said he was considering calling a summit of world leaders in New York in September 2009 to give impetus to climate talks due to end at a conference in Copenhagen in a year's time.

LEADERSHIP

John Kerry, designated head of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Obama would invest heavily in renewable energies and "green jobs" to help end the recession.

"President Obama will be like night and day compared to President Bush," he told reporters of Obama's climate policies.

Obama wants to cut U.S. emissions, now running 17 percent above 1990 levels, back to those levels by 2020. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol and his laxer policies would allow U.S. emissions to keep rising until 2025.

Kerry said it was "absolutely essential" that China, which has overtaken the United States as the world's top carbon dioxide emitter, gets more involved in combating global warming to win U.S. endorsement of any new treaty.

But developing nations, led by China and India, insist that rich nations should first make deep cuts.

Details of a new Adaptation Fund to help poor countries adjust to the impacts of rising seas, droughts, floods and heatwaves were among the most contentious remaining issues.

Tuvalu's Prime Minister Apisai Ielemia, whose Pacific island nation is at risk from rising seas, accused some rich countries of "burying us in red tape" to deny access to the fund.

"We are not contemplating migration ... we will survive," Ielemia said to applause from delegates. The Adaptation Fund could reach $300 million a year by 2012 to help countries build coastal defenses or develop drought-resistant crops.

The U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said the Polish talks had achieved the modest goals of agreeing a plan of work toward Copenhagen. Negotiators will hold three preparatory meetings in 2009.

"This is a blue-collar conference," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat. "It's about getting a job done, it's not about spectacles or breakthroughs."

(Editing by Andrew Roche)