US issues warning on emissions targets
Attempts to begin negotiations on a new international climate change deal appeared to have hit difficulties today as the US said it did not want specific targets for global emission cuts in the “roadmap”.
An initial text of the document, which will lay out the route towards reaching an agreement in 2009, said the deal would work on the basis of scientific calls for 25% to 40% cuts on 1990 levels by 2020.
The draft, which looks set to change regularly as officials negotiate the detail at the UN conference in Bali over the next few days, also said greenhouse gases must peak in the next 10 to 15 years and halve from 2000 levels by 2050.
But the US delegation warned it was unwilling to accept particular figures in the plan, which will be at the centre of debate among negotiators attempting to hammer out a final document by Friday.
Lead negotiator Harlan Watson said the US is in Bali to work in a “constructive manner” to get a roadmap for negotiations to be completed by 2009.
But he said: “The principal difficulty with having any numbers in the text is it might prejudice outcomes.
“I don’t think it is prudent or reasonable to start off with some set of numbers – that’s what the negotiations are for.”
He also said the figures, which were derived from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) most recent assessment this year, are surrounded by “many uncertainties”.
“There is going to be a lot of analysis over the period of negotiations and to start with a predetermined answer is not the appropriate thing to do.”
Mr Watson also told a press conference in Bali he does not think the EU target of limiting global warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels is a “helpful” starting point.
But officials on the European side privately said they were hopeful the range of figures for emissions cuts might remain in the document, which is based on the first week of discussions by officials at the UN climate change conference.
Mr Watson said he does not believe the US will be alone in having problems with numbers included in the draft document.
And he denied the Americans feel isolated because they are the only remaining industrialised nation not to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, under which signatories committed to their part in a global 5% cut from 1990 levels by 2008 to 2010.
Australia ratified the treaty last week.
The draft, called the “non-paper by the co-facilitators”, lays out various options for the hoped-for roadmap, as well as a list of issues for consideration under headings such as mitigation, adaptation, finance and investment and technology – all of which are currently blank.
