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Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) — United Nations negotiators may allow some developed nations to drop their greenhouse-gas targets in a new climate-change treaty beginning in 2013.
Industrialized countries should “principally” commit to new limits on emissions blamed for global warming, according to a draft document guiding negotiations by 37 richer nations that currently have limits under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol climate treaty. The draft was provided today to delegates at UN-sponsored treaty talks in Poznan, Poland.
“The wording leaves open the possibility that not all countries will have targets,” Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said today in an interview.
The 37 developed nations and about 150 others are negotiating how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases scientists say are warming the planet. They aim to craft a framework for a new global-warming treaty to take over when Kyoto’s emissions targets expire in 2012.
Today’s document calls for developed countries bound by the Kyoto treaty to adopt commitments in the next measurement period that “take the form of quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives,” dubbed QELROs.
The U.S., which never ratified the Kyoto agreement, and China have each proposed alternatives to quantifiable emissions goals, including energy-intensity targets. The two nations are the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gases.
Twenty richer nations including Japan, Italy and Australia may be releasing more greenhouse-gas pollution than they agreed to under Kyoto to curb global warming, New Carbon Finance analysts said. Canada, whose emissions are more than a third higher than their Kyoto obligation, has said it won’t try to meet their target.
U.S. President George Bush in 2002 proposed curbing U.S. emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 18 percent by 2012.
By Alex Morales and Jeremy van Loon
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So, while the scientists say “we must curb emissions harder and deeper, starting right now”, the politicians say “now’s not the right time”.
And the reason the George Bush target is so meaningless has been addressed elsewhere in detail, but the essential part of it is an 18% emissions reduction per unit of gross domestic product just comes down to ongoing efficiency improvements under the business-as-usual method. In fact, 18% would be less than is forecast under regular efficiency improvements.
The planet doesn’t respond to emissions per unit of production, it responds to total emissions by all human beings. And that is the figure we need to bring down, now.
That’s double standards by the developed nations. When all’s going well for them and when they are looking forward to cut emissions, they press other nations like India, Brazil, etc and pressurize them to set emissions targets.
These developing nations keep yelling that they are not developed yet, many people are living in poverty, businesses aren’t established, and bringing carbon laws into force may put some brakes to development. Yet they are bashed for this viewpoint of theirs.
But now when the developed nations are in recession and fear economic downturn, suddenly their own GHG-cutting priorities have gone down. The recent EU Car emissions laws postponed targets for later dates and developed nations are thinking of ways to avoid legislation.
But just wait for the economy to settle. You will see again how the pressure on developing countries starts to build up again.
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