U.S. still opposes warming pact
U.S. officials have raised a second round of unusually bluntly worded objections to a proposed global warming declaration that Germany prepared for next month’s G-8 summit, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post.
Representatives from the world’s leading industrial nations met Thursday and Friday in Heiligendamm, Germany, to negotiate over German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s proposed statement, which calls for limiting the worldwide temperature rise this century to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit and cutting global greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Bush administration officials – who raised similar objections in April – rejected the idea of setting mandatory emissions targets as well as language calling for the G-8 nations to raise the overall energy efficiencies of their countries by 20 percent by 2020. With less than two weeks remaining, said sources familiar with the talks, the climate document remains the only unresolved issue in the statements the world leaders are expected to sign at the June 6-8 summit.
“The U.S still has serious, fundamental concerns about this draft statement,” a paper dated May 14 states. “The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses multiple ‘red lines’ in terms of what we simply cannot agree to … We have tried to ‘tread lightly’ but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position.”
The most recent draft, dated May 24, shows that the two sides remain at loggerheads. While Germany has offered to alter language identifying a 3.6 degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperature as a dangerous tipping point and instead accept a Russian proposal that targets a range of from 2.7 to 4.5 degrees, the U.S. has yet to accept the modified language.
The U.S also remains opposed to a statement that reads, “We acknowledge that the U.N. climate process is an appropriate forum for negotiating future global action on climate change.”
At the United Nations, which has served as the central forum for international climate talks for more than a decade, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has not responded directly to U.S. pressure for a change. However, he will be attending the G-8 summit and on May 18 he sent a letter to every G-8 leader calling climate change “one of the most profound global challenges of our time. I hope that the world leaders that gather together at Heiligendamm will be ready to discuss this subject in its critical dimensions.”
Negotiators are also still debating language that calls for improving energy efficiency in the transportation sector over the next 13 years by at least 20 percent, compared with 2005.