US 'fully committed to UN climate talks'

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 29 Mar 09;

BONN, March 29, 2009 (AFP) – The US administration is "fervently engaged" in UN talks to forge a global climate treaty but cannot rescue the troubled process on its own, its top climate negotiator said Sunday.

"Yes, the US will be powerfully and fervently engaged in this process," Todd Stern said as the 11-day United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) technical meeting got under way.

The entry of the new US team into negotiations involving more than 190 states and riven by deep divisions between rich and developing countries has generated huge expectations, sharpened by the contrast with Obama's predecessor.

George W. Bush had rejected the Kyoto Protocol, whose provisions expire in 2012, and nearly torpedoed the 2007 "Bali Roadmap" agreement that set a December 2009 deadline for a new deal.

Stern addressed more than 2,500 participants at the opening plenary session of the UN forum.

"We are very glad to be back," he said to enthusiastic applause.

Reactions were broadly positive, even from nations that remain critical of parts of Obama's climate plan.

"I am very glad that the US is reengaging -- that is a very good sign," the top Chinese negotiator, Su Wei, told AFP.

"Stern sent a very important signal on the importance of the science and the urgency," said Alden Meyer, a climate expert at the Boston-based Union of Concerted Scientists.

But in his first press conference here as Special Envoy on climate for US President Barack Obama, Stern cautioned that the United States could not "wave a magic wand" to reconcile differences.

"I don't think anybody should be thinking that the US can ride in on a white horse and make it all work," he said.

He also made it clear that tough negotiations lay ahead.

Stern challenged China and other emerging economic powerhouses such as India and Brazil to take on stronger commitments in curbing carbon pollution.

China and the United States today vie for the title of top carbon polluter, and together account for about 40 percent of global greenhouse emissions.

"If you do the math, you simply cannot be anywhere near where science tells us we need to be if you don't have China involved, as well also other major developing countries," he said.

"How that is captured, understood, expressed and quantified is going to be extremely important," he said.

The other key issue to be resolved, he added, was how to divide up the cost of mitigating greenhouse gases and adapting to the devastating impacts of global warming.

Industrialised nations are prepared to take on the larger burden, but want emerging economies that are also major carbon polluters to undertake action of some kind.

These countries, in turn, say rich nations should take the lead in making deep cuts, and put money on the table to help them develop clean technology and adapt to climate change already under way.

Stern rejected criticism that Obama's national targets were not ambitious enough, or that they fell far short of European efforts.

The EU has promising to slash emissions by 20 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020, and by 30 percent if other industrialised countries follow suit. By 2050, the cuts would be deepen to 80 percent.

During the US presidential campaign, Obama vowed to match the European Union's mid-century objectives.

He offered what appeared to be a more modest goal for 2020 of simply returning the United States to 1990 level emissions.

But Stern said this would represent a 16 or 17 percent reduction compared to today's levels. And in terms of cost, US and EU efforts would be on a par, he added.

He also sought to dampen expectations, pointing out that he had been in his new job for less than six weeks.

"We are still very much in a listening mode, collecting ideas," his newly appointed deputy, Jonathan Pershing, told journalists.

The Obama team was also clearly at pains to avoid getting too far ahead of climate and energy legislation taking shape in the US Congress.

"Let me speak frankly here: it is in no one's interest to repeat the experience of Kyoto by delivering an agreement that won't gain sufficient support at home," Stern told the plenary session.

In 1997, the US Senate voted 95 to 0 in a non-binding resolution to reject the new climate treaty as it did not impose commitments on developing countries.

U.S. to push for UN climate deal but no "magic wand"
Alister Doyle, Reuters 29 Mar 09;

BONN, Germany (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's administration promised to push for a new United Nations climate treaty on Sunday but said Washington had no magic wand and that all countries had to help.

"The United States is going to be powerfully and fully engaged," U.S. special envoy for climate change Todd Stern said at the opening of 175-nation U.N. talks in Bonn, the first since Obama took office in January speaking of a "planet in peril."

"But we are all going to have to do this together, we don't have a magic wand," Stern told a news conference. The March 29-April 8 meeting is working on a U.N. climate deal meant to be agreed in Copenhagen in December 2009.

In a speech, Stern won two rounds of applause, each about 20 seconds long, in stark contrast to the frosty reception given to President George W. Bush's envoys who were often accused of inaction and were even booed at U.N. talks in Bali in 2007.

Even so, Stern laid out clear limits to Obama's ambitions. He said the United States wanted to work for a treaty that was economically "doable" and that countries could not expect Washington to "ride in on a white horse" to solve the problem.

"We can't," he said.

Calling for more action by all, he said the United States had a "unique responsibility" as the main historic emitter of greenhouse gases. And he said he was "enormously impressed" by actions by developing countries such as India, South Africa, Brazil, China and Mexico.

RECESSION

Some nations, racked by recession, have been waiting to hear more about U.S. policies before unveiling their own. The Bonn talks are due to consider issues including the levels of greenhouse gas cuts needed to slow global warming.

Obama wants to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by about 16-17 percent from current levels to take them back to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent below by 2050.

Under Bush, the United States was isolated among industrialized nations in opposing caps on emissions under the U.N.'s existing Kyoto Protocol.

"Everyone is very excited" by signs of a stronger U.S. commitment, said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat. Environmentalists also welcomed the change of tone after eight years of the Bush administration.

But Stern said the United States could not make the deepest cuts in greenhouse gases advised by the U.N. Climate Panel for 2020 to avoid the worst of global warming, of between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels.

"We should be guided by a combination of science and pragmatism," Stern said. Many developing nations, led by China and India, have said that Obama should do more.

Almost no developed nations have laid out goals within the 25-40 percent range. Among the most ambitious, the European Union plans cuts of 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

The U.N. Climate Panel projects more floods, droughts, more powerful storms, heatwaves and rising sea levels from a gradual build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.

Some Pacific island states fear they could be wiped off the map by rising seas. "We welcome the new-look United States. We hope the rhetoric matches the reality," Ian Fry, of the Pacific island state of Tuvalu, told the meeting.

De Boer has in the past called Obama's 2020 goals an "opening offer" that he hopes will be toughened in Copenhagen.

Stern said that it was unclear whether Congress will manage to pass climate legislation before the Copenhagen talks. If a law is passed by then, he said, it would be unrealistic for Washington to sign up to any tougher cuts.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Obama envoy: Time to act on climate change
Arthur Max, Associated Press Yahoo News 29 Mar 09;

BONN, Germany – Once booed at international climate talks, the United States won sustained applause Sunday when President Barack Obama's envoy pledged to "make up for lost time" in reaching a global agreement on climate change.

Todd Stern also praised efforts by countries like China to reign in their carbon emissions, but said global warming "requires a global response" and that rapidly developing economies like China "must join together" with the industrial world to solve the problem.

The debut of Obama's climate change team was widely anticipated after eight years of obdurate participation in U.N. climate talks by the previous Bush administration.

"We are very glad to be back. We want to make up for lost time, and we are seized with the urgency of the task before us," Stern said to loud applause from the 2,600 delegates to the U.N. negotiations.

They clapped again when Stern said the U.S. recognized "our unique responsibility ... as the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases," which has created a problem threatening the entire world.

The two-week meeting by 175 countries that began Sunday was the latest stage of talks aimed at forging a climate change agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on emissions targets for rich countries, which expires in 2012.

The United States was instrumental in negotiating Kyoto, but failed to win support at home. When George W. Bush took office, he renounced it, calling Kyoto a flawed agreement that would harm the U.S. economy and unfair because it demanded nothing from countries like China or India.

Stern said his team did not want a repeat of the Kyoto debacle. The latest agreement is due to be finalized in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

"Ultimately, this is a political process," he said. "The way forward is steered by science and pragmatism."

Stern said no one on his team doubted that climate change is real. "The science is clear, the threat is real, the facts on the ground are outstripping the worst-case scenarios. The cost of inaction or inadequate action are unacceptable," he said — a total change of tone from his predecessors.

Scientists warned recently that climate change is happening more rapidly that previously calculated and said the Earth could be in danger of major climatic changes that would trigger widespread social disruption. U.N. scientists say rising sea levels caused by global warming threatens to swamp coastlines and entire island states, and predicted increasing drought for arid countries, especially in Africa.

Obama has set aside $80 billion in his economic stimulus package for green energy, promised $150 billion for research over 10 years, and was tightening regulations on auto emissions, Stern said.

"America itself cannot provide the solution, but there is no solution without America," he said.

"It sent chills up my spine seeing the U.S. applauded," Keya Chatterjee of the Worldwide Fund for Nature said after Stern's speech.

It was only 15 months ago at Bali, Indonesia, that U.S. negotiators were booed when they threatened to veto an accord laying down a two-year negotiating process to replace Kyoto. They backed off when the delegate from Papua New Guinea, Kevin Conrad, told them if "you are not willing to lead ... please get out of the way."

Stern urged delegates Sunday to adopt a long-range vision for reducing climate change, rather than to focus on "a series of short-term, stopgap measures," and repeated Obama's determination to cut emissions by 80 percent by mid-century.

His speech was meant to shift the debate from persistent demands by developing countries for industrial nations to reduce emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Stern has said previously that goal was unattainable for the U.S.

Speaking earlier to reporters, Stern defended the U.S. administration's goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions by roughly 16 percent over the next dozen years from current levels.

"We don't think (the target) is low at all," he said, adding it was "consistent with what other countries are willing to do."

Others disagreed.

"The target that the United States has put forward is not going to be sufficient," said Chatterjee.

Jake Schmidt of the Nature Resources Defense Council said the Obama administration was talking behind the scenes about setting an annual emissions reduction target leading up to 2050.

"It's hard to turn a big ship around, but it would show we are serious about our commitments to cut emissions from the medium to the long term," Schmidt said.

With time running out before the pact is due to be completed in December, delegates are trying to narrow vast differences over how best to fight climate change.

Issues include how much countries need to reduce emissions, how to raise the tens of billions of dollars needed annually to fight global warming and how to transfer money and technology to poor countries who are most vulnerable to increasingly fierce storms, droughts and failing crops.

Stern said the U.S. position will be guided by whatever deal Obama can strike with Congress.

"I do not think that it is realistic to believe that we will then be able to go into an international setting and get a higher number than that," he said.

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AP correspondent Vanessa Gera contributed to this article.

(This version CORRECTS name of Natural Resources Defense Council.)