Guardian - Buzz Growing About Potential US Walkout In Cancun Talks

[hatrack]

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In a briefing with foreign journalists in Washington, the chief climate envoy, Todd Stern, was blunt. "We're either going to see progress across the range of issues or we're not going to see much progress," said Stern. "We're not going to race forward on three issues and take a first step on other important ones. We're going to have to get them all moving at a similar pace." In the run-up to the Cancún talks, Stern has said repeatedly that America will not budge from its insistence that fast-emerging economies such as India and China commit to reducing emissions and to an inspection process that will verify those actions.

The hard line – which some in Washington have seen as ritual diplomatic posturing – has fuelled speculation that the Obama administration could be prepared to walk out of the Cancún talks.

It is already under pressure for its green agenda from a new conservative Republican power bloc in Congress determined to block the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency to act on greenhouse gases and other sources of pollution, and defund programmes dealing with climate change. There is next to no chance Congress would take up cap-and-trade legislation or ratify any UN treaty.

The administration's weak domestic position, in turn, has cast doubts on its ability to deliver even the very modest 17% cut on 2005 emissions Obama agreed at the Copenhagen summit last year. But a walk-out would wreck any lingering hopes that small progress in Cancún might put the UN negotiations process back on track after the debacle of Copenhagen. However, Stern was insistent America will not move forward on climate finance without movement on its core issues. "We have heard a lot of talk this year about capturing the so-called low-hanging fruit by which countries who use that phrase often mean all the provisions dealing with financial and technology assistance, leaving the so-called hard issues of mitigation and transparency for sometime later," he told last week's foreign press briefing. "We are not doing that."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/30/cancun-climate-change-summit-america

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Since Chinese per capita emissions are now the same as France's, they should be in any agreement

While emissions in China and other developing countries have increased rapidly in recent years, also in absolute figures, the picture is different for CO2 emissions per capita or per unit of GDP. Since 1990, CO2 emissions per capita have increased in China from 2.2 to 6.1 tonne per capita and decreased in the EU-15 from 9.1 to 7.9 tonne per capita and from 19.5 to 17.2 tonne per capita in the USA. These changes reflect a number of factors including the large economic development in China, structural changes in national and global economies, and the impact of climate and energy policies. Due to rapid economic development, per capita emissions in China are quickly approaching levels common in the industrialised countries of the Annex I group under the Kyoto Protocol. In fact, present CO2 emissions per person in China are now similar to France.

http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2010/No-growth-in-total-global-CO2-emissions-in-2009.html