Turbulent climate talks

Friday, Nov. 13, 2009

EDITORIAL

Clouds are hanging over current negotiations leading up to the 15th, 192-nation U.N. Climate Change Conference scheduled to be held in Copenhagen Dec. 7-18 for the purpose of adopting a global framework for curbing greenhouse gas emissions from 2013. The Kyoto Protocol now in effect will expire in 2012.

There is a schism between developed and developing countries over specific responsibility for greenhouse-gas emission cuts and technological transfers and financial aid to developing countries to help them curb emissions. Developing countries are calling on developed countries to commit themselves to deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

Negotiations are so tortuous that Mr. Yvo De Boer, executive director of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, reportedly said it will be "physically impossible under any scenario to complete every detail of a treaty in Copenhagen."

Developed countries have emitted large amounts of CO2 by burning coal and oil since the Industrial Revolution. In recent decades, developing countries also have started using large amounts of fossil fuels for their economic development.

China, now the No. 1 emitter, and the United States, the No. 2 emitter, are responsible for 41 percent of the global emissions. Without their participation, the new framework will have little impact. Both developing and developed nations should remember the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities." At the July summit in Italy, the Group of Eight industrialized nations agreed on the need for developed countries to reduce emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050 in order to limit average global temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. This is taken to mean that they must reduce emissions 25 percent or more from 1990 levels by 2020.

Although Japan accounts for only 4 percent of the global emissions, it can play a constructive role by working out details of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's pledge to cut emissions 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 and to extend technological and financial assistance to developing countries as leverage to advance the negotiations. At home, Mr. Hatoyama is urged to immediately spell out concrete measures to curb emissions.