Word: protocols
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...more immediate concern will be the negotiations in Copenhagen. Since Reid's comments, environmental groups have been getting calls from foreign embassies suddenly unsure of where the U.S. stands on a global deal. What they want to avoid is a replay of the negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol back in 1997 - the U.S., led by then Vice President Al Gore, agreed to long-term carbon-emission reductions, only to be repudiated later 95-0 by the U.S. Senate...
...stands, the chances of a new global deal being achieved in Copenhagen - one that would succeed the expiring Kyoto Protocol and include both the U.S. and major developing nations like China - are already looking dim. There are still major differences between the developed and developing nations over how the responsibility for cutting carbon should be divided - and how much the rich world should devote to poor countries that will need to adapt to climate change. "It's going to be a very difficult situation at Copenhagen," says Annie Petsonk, the international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund...
...rich countries have been the biggest polluters, but also that they have done nothing about it," says Sunita Narain, director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, which organized a South Asian media workshop two weeks ago. Rich countries, or Annex-I nations of the Kyoto Protocol, were supposed to cut emissions 5.1% over 1990 levels by 2008-12, she explains. But barring the economies in transition (like those of Eastern Europe, whose economies collapsed following the breakup of the Soviet Union), developed countries' emissions actually increased 14.5% during this period. "The fact is, even if India...
...which the West is largely responsible must be dealt with by assigning responsibility, but the flow - the continuing emissions that developing countries are increasingly adding to - must be resolved by incentivizing cuts on future emissions. They demand more flexibility from India; the U.S. did not sign the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 because it would not accept any binding cuts unless developing countries accepted cuts too. (Watch an interview with Energy Secretary Steven...
...Developing countries refuse to do this. They say the hard-fought Kyoto Protocol, whose successor they will be working out at Copenhagen, is unequivocal in laying out differentiated responsibilities, and since the biggest polluters have yet to fulfill their responsibilities, the goalposts cannot be changed. But, they add, India will be happy to green its energy mix if the West provides the money and technology (this is the common position of developing countries - Brazil, India and China have all submitted proposals demanding that funds and technology flow from rich to poor countries to enable the latter to undertake mitigation...