Durban climate change talks: stage set for titanic clash between nations

[Ghost Dog]

With only days to go before the start of the next big round of climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, the stage is now set for a titanic clash between nations battling it out over the shape of any new UN global warming treaty...

... When the UN climate system was first set up back in the late 1980s, the industrialised world contributed by far the most global greenhouse gases – and therefore the 1992 Climate Convention and 1997 Kyoto Protocol understandably envisaged emissions curbs for rich emitters only. Today, carbon emissions from OECD countries have declined by 6% since 1990, while the majority of greenhouse pollution now comes from the developing world – in particular China, India and Brazil...

... China, India and the more powerful members of the developing world are still insisting that the only outcome from Durban that matters is another round of the Kyoto Protocol for industrialised countries only. Climate-wise this makes little sense, because with the US on the sidelines and the recent inauspicious exits of Japan, Russia and Canada, Kyoto covers a dwindling 15% of global emissions. The sad truth is that Kyoto is being used as a negotiating ploy to delay the eventual adoption of a truly worldwide treaty on carbon emissions – which is the only way to comprehensively tackle climate change. (That treaty could still be Kyoto – but only if the big guys all sign up.)

So these are the real battle lines of Durban: on the one side stands an obstinate cabal of big emitters, developed and developing, who have little in common except an opposition to the prospect of any legally binding targets being inscribed in a new treaty. Step forward India, the United States, China, Japan and Canada.

On the other side stands a growing informal alliance of vulnerable countries, small island states, the European Union, several Latin American nations like Colombia, Costa Rica and Chile, plus Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland, who have been meeting under the banner of the Cartagena Dialogue, and are all keeping the flame alive for meaningful progress...

/... http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/25/meaningful-durban-treaty-weak-strong


In spite of economic recession/depression, global carbon dioxide emissions rose by a record-breaking amount last year .

[FreakinDJ]

1. It was China who derailed the Kyoto treaty