Climate Talks End With Meager Promises by Richard Harris
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Obama Joins Global Warming Deal by Richard Harris
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Morning Edition, July 10, 2009 · International climate talks held in Italy this week ended with little progress. The rich industrial nations wouldn't promise to cut back their emissions in the near term. And China, India and the rest of the developing world wouldn't commit to cutting their emissions, ever.
All nations of the world need to act to reduce the risk of a climate catastrophe. But so far, there's much more posturing than action.
China argues that the United States and other rich nations put most of the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, so they need to act first and most aggressively. They demand that those nations slash their carbon dioxide emissions by a staggering 40 percent — in just 10 years.
Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, who was once a diplomat, regards this demand as little more than an over-the-top bargaining tactic.
China is still struggling to pull hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. There is no way at this point they can credibly commit to actually bring down their total carbon emissions.
The industrialized world, on the other hand, has acknowledged that the world needs to take dramatic action and has set ambitious long-range goals. But they haven't agreed to near-term action plans.
And action from the developed world doesn't mean just cutting their own emissions. Just as important, rich countries need to spread clean energy technology — and money — around the world.
The Obama adminsitration is starting to work with China directly to help push forward clean technologies. But that makes some in Congress nervous — after all, we're helping a major economic competitor.
A climate that can't tolerate much more carbon dioxide before the world gets dangerously hot, rich countries offering more rhetoric than action, and developing nations that say raising living standards is more important than cutting back on fossil fuels.
All Things Considered, July 8, 2009
Targeting global warming, President Barack Obama and other leaders of the world's richest industrial countries pledged Wednesday to seek dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to slow dangerous climate change. Setting a marker for success, they agreed for the first time that worldwide temperatures must not rise more than a few degrees.
However, their goals are nonbinding, and it's far from clear they will be met. The wealthy nations failed to persuade the leaders of big developing countries to promise to cut their own fast-spreading pollution, unable to overcome arguments that the well-established industrial giants aren't doing enough in the short term.
Obama and his counterparts from the other wealthy Group of Eight nations agreed that global temperatures should be kept from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, in the fight against weather changes caused by humans.
Environmentalists welcomed the shift in U.S. policy but criticized the G-8's failure to agree on more immediate goals for the industrial countries. The long-term ambition "is too far off to matter — poor people are being hit today," said Antonio Hill, of the nonprofit Oxfam International.
The G-8 leaders also addressed the global recession and agreed economic conditions are still too shaky to begin rolling back massive fiscal stimulus plans.
The abrupt return home from Italy of Chinese President Hu Jintao after ethnic tensions soared in China's western Xingjiang territory could weaken trust-building discussions on making further progress on climate change. He did leave a national delegation behind.
