Obama envoy: US recognizes "our unique responsibility", COP 15
Release Date: 2009-03-30
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 UN 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 UN. negotiations.
They clapped again when Stern said the US 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 is 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 US 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.
"America itself cannot provide the solution, but there is no solution without America," he said.
It was only 15 months ago at Bali, Indonesia, that US 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.
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 US position will be guided by whatever deal Obama can strike with Congress.
Danish Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard called Stern's speak "striking" and added: "Now the United States and all other countries have to get concrete about how to deal with the climate challenge until 2020. (...) This will be the litmus test of the commitment. But like Todd Stern said in his speach: The US is glad to be back in the negotiations. For my part I can assure the delight is mutual."
| Type: | NORMAL |
| Company: | COP 15 |
| Country: | Denmark |
| Url: | http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=988 |