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U.N. Climate Talks Go Down to the Wire NewsMax.com Wires BANGKOK -- U.N. talks on ways to fight climate change are on track to approve a blueprint for governments on Friday, but major differences are still being thrashed out, delegates say. "Normal progress is being made and we will complete on time. I think it's a very positive mood and people are keen to get the job done," Mohan Munasinghe, a vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said on Thursday. But talks in the Thai capital were expected to drag on late into the night, with China and Europe facing off over the costs and levels of greenhouse gas emissions. "Some countries are being difficult and we don't know how difficult until we come to the final moment," said one delegate who declined to be named. China, the world's number two emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States, wants the IPCC report to exclude wording about scenarios for stabilizing gas levels near current levels. Beijing objects to any language that suggests a cap on emissions or stabilization levels, wording it feels could leave China vulnerable to demands in future climate talks to slow rapid economic growth or spend vast sums on cleaner technology. Scientists and government officials from more than 100 countries have been meeting since Monday to discuss the report by the IPCC, which draws on the work of 2,500 scientists. Story Continues Below
The report is the third to be released this year by the U.N. climate panel. The previous two painted a grim future of human-induced global warming causing more hunger, droughts, heat waves and rising seas. A draft of the latest report estimates that stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions will cost between 0.2 percent and 3.0 percent of world gross domestic product by 2030, depending on the stiffness of curbs imposed on rising emissions.
For example, by 2030, the costs of letting greenhouse gas concentrations rise to 650 ppmv (parts per million volume) of carbon dioxide-equivalent are 0.2 percent of global gross domestic product, it says. The lowest level of 445 ppmv would be the most costly and arguably impossible to achieve. Current concentrations are now at about 430 ppmv of CO2-equivalent and rising sharply. The first delegate said no particular stabilization target had been set in the talks. But the European Union says a 2 degree Celsius rise is a threshold for "dangerous" changes to the climate system, implying a fairly minimal rise in greenhouse gas concentrations. "The EU wants a long way below 550 ppm. China is somehow wanting to exclude information about the low scenarios and others are too," the delegate said. Michael Muller, a junior minister in Germany's environment ministry, took a swipe at China for its perceived intransigence. "The delegation from China tries massively to prevent such a position and there are not a few states that hide behind them," he said told reporters in Bangkok. Global environment group WWF said on Thursday China should not be labeled a villain and Chinese delegates had been raising useful issues during the meeting. "They have the renewable portfolio standard that the U.S. is currently lacking. They have car fuel-efficiency standards that are amongst the strictest in the world," said Hans Verolme, director of the WWF's Global Climate Change Program.
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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