Nairobi climate conference a failure? ... Lack of support for Kryoto. "Her nomadic Maasai people have already been stricken by cattle-killing drought attributable to climate change, Looremetta said, but the countries emitting global-warming gases are doing too little to help."
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By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Delegates from more than 180 nations struggled Friday into the final day of a two-week U.N. climate conference to find a compromise timetable for negotiating deeper cuts in emissions of the gases blamed for global warming.
Environmentalists feared the disputes might delay serious talks so long that the world would be left without emissions caps after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
"We are not seeing the bold leadership required. Further delay is totally irresponsible," said Catherine Pearce, of Friends of the Earth International.
The 1997 Kyoto pact obliges 35 industrial nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States rejects that accord, with President Bush contending it would damage the U.S. economy and should have obliged poorer countries as well.
Scientists attribute at least some of the past century's 1 F rise in global temperatures to the atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, byproducts of power plants, automobiles and other fossil fuel-burning sources. Continued temperature rises could seriously disrupt the climate, they say.
The Nairobi delegates have been discussing how to structure talks to establish emissions quotas after Kyoto's 2012 expiration. Key to those talks would be a required review of Kyoto's workings, which might open the door to demands for cutbacks in the post-2012 period by such fast-growing economies as China's and India's.
Some were proposing carrying out the review as early as 2008, but developing countries favored delaying it until as late as 2011.
Such delays would likely leave a gap between Kyoto's reductions and a new series of cutbacks, presenting "a real danger of the collapse of the carbon market," said Hans Velorme, a Dutch spokesman for the environmentalist Climate Action Network.
The multi-billion-dollar carbon market has evolved within the European Union. In imposing quotas on emissions from power plants and other energy-intensive industries, the EU established a trading system whereby companies that don't use their full emissions allowances can sell credits to others that need them.
A similar market has developed in emission-reduction projects in the developing world, not obligated to cut emissions under Kyoto, but able to sell such credits to countries that are.
In addition, the Kyoto member countries have been exploring ways to bring the United States into a global emissions-reduction regime.
Speaking with reporters, Kenyan environmentalist Sharon Looremetta dismissed the Nairobi meeting as a failure. "Most major issues have been shelved until next year," she said.
Her nomadic Maasai people have already been stricken by cattle-killing drought attributable to climate change, Looremetta said, but the countries emitting global-warming gases are doing too little to help.
"We don't drive 4x4 cars, we don't go on vacation by airplane, but we do suffer from climate change," she said. |
