Worst polluters delay climate deal

NEGOTIATORS from Europe, islands threatened by rising oceans and the world’s poorest countries sought to keep alive the only treaty governing global warming, struggling against an unlikely alliance of the US, China and India.

Bleary-eyed delegates worked through the night and all day yesterday at the two-week UN conference, with the negotiators looking ahead to a second and final night of meetings expected to last until dawn today.

Delegates from the 194-party conference are trying to map out the pathway toward limiting global emissions of greenhouse gases for the rest of this decade, and then how to continue beyond 2020.

Scientists say unless those emissions — chiefly carbon dioxide from power generation and industry — level out and reverse within a few years, the Earth will be set on a possibly irreversible path of rising temperatures that lead to ever greater climate catastrophes.

The EU said after a negotiating session of 26 key ministers, that support was growing for its plan to negotiate a new accord for a post-2020 world.

But optimism faded as the day wore on and the three holdouts held firm. More than 120 climate-vulnerable countries signed on to the EU vision calling for all countries to be held accountable for their carbon emissions in the future, not just the industrial countries. The US, China and India, all for slightly different reasons, refused.

European climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said she was encouraged by progress overnight, but warned if the three largest polluters stand fast, “I don’t think that there will be a deal in Durban”.

Under discussion in the back rooms was an extension of binding pledges by the EU and other industrial countries to cut carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Those commitments expire next year.

The EU, the primary bloc bound by commitments under the 1997 protocol, conditioned an extension on starting new talks on an accord to replace Kyoto, at the latest by 2020. It insists the new agreement equally oblige all countries to abide by their emission targets.

Developing countries were adamant the Kyoto commitments continue as it is the only agreement that compels any nation to reduce emissions.

Industrial countries say the document is deeply flawed because it makes no demands on heavily polluting developing countries. It was for that reason the US never ratified it.