Obama: Time is running out for climate change deal
US President Barack Obama raced from one impromptu meeting to another and made an animated plea for compromise at the climate change summit in Copenhagen today, making plain his frustration over the difficulty of pushing world leaders to settle on a plan to combat global warming.
“We are running short on time,” he told the 193-nation summit as the clock was running out on its final day. “There has to be movement on all sides.”
Working into the night and putting his departure time in question, Mr Obama had scheduled a second one-to-one meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao after an earlier session of nearly an hour. But that second meeting did not take place and it was unclear why.
Officials had said the two men made a step forward in their earlier talks, though the degree of progress was not clear.
Mr Obama also attended a third meeting with other world leaders, the only that Mr Wen attended.
Late in the evening, Mr Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton held talks with European leaders, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Asked how negotiations were going as he entered the meeting, Mr Obama replied: “Always hopeful.”
The direct talks between Mr Obama and Mr Wen underscored efforts to resolve differences which represent one of the major roadblocks in reaching a global climate deal.
The US has been insisting that China, the only nation which emits more heat-trapping gasses than the US, make its emissions-reduction pledges subject to international review.
Without mentioning China specifically, Mr Obama addressed Beijing’s resistance in his speech.
“I don’t know how you have an international agreement where we all are not sharing information and making sure we are meeting our commitments,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense. It would be a hollow victory.”
Mr Obama indirectly acknowledged that some nations feel the US is doing too little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and he urged leaders to accept a less-than-perfect pact. Meanwhile, he offered no new US concessions.
“No country will get everything that it wants,” he said.
It looked possible that Mr Obama’s biggest success at the summit would have nothing to do with climate change.
He met Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev and said afterwards that the US and Russia are “quite close” to a new nuclear arms control agreement to replace an expired Cold War-era arms control treaty.
In his speech, Mr Obama said the US had acted boldly by vowing to reduce greenhouse gasses and help other nations pay for similar efforts. Critics note that many industrialised nations have promised much larger reductions.
And yet he arrived in snow-covered Copenhagen with no new proposal from the US side. Some had hoped he might increase Washington’s emissions-cut pledge, now only a fraction of those from other developed countries, or put a specific dollar amount on America’s expected contributions to short- or long-term aid funds to help poorer nations deal with the effects of climate change.
Mr Obama had planned to spend only about nine hours at the summit. But the rapid success of meetings added several hours to his stay.
The US commitment to reduce greenhouse gasses mirrors legislation before Congress. It calls for 17% reduction in such pollution from 2005 levels by 2020 - the equivalent of 3% to 4% from the more commonly used baseline of 1990 levels. That is far less than the offers from the European Union, Japan and Russia.
Even that target was hard-won in a skittish Congress, and Mr Obama has decided he cannot go further without potentially souring final passage of the Bill, approved in the House but not yet considered in the Senate. He also could imperil eventual Senate ratification of any global treaty that emerges next year.
