The United Nations’ climate change conference kicked off in Copenhagen on Monday (7 December) with a “strong commitment” to clinch a deal and an announcement from the USA that it would seek to include greenhouse gas emissions in existing legislation.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ruled that greenhouse gases threaten public health and the environment, a move that not only paves the way for regulation of emissions but also boosts the standing of the US in the Copenhagen negotiations.
Representatives from some 193 countries are meeting in Copenhagen for the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Kyoto Protocol. Their aim at the two-week negotiations is to reach agreement on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases after the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
Officials at the meeting stressed the importance of the talks and the urgent need for a deal.
“We have reached the deadline and there is no going back,” said newly elected COP president and Danish COP15 Minister Connie Hedegaard. “Copenhagen will be the city of the three Cs: Cooperation, Commitment and Consensus. Now is the time to capture the moment and conclude a truly ambitious global deal.”
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told the conference that global emissions would need to peak by 2015 for the world to stay below a 2°C temperature rise. “The costs of responding to climate change will become progressively higher as time goes on, therefore we must take action now,” he said.
Delegates at the meeting need to overcome significant barriers to a deal, however, including agreement on helping developing countries to fund emission cuts and controversial mechanisms such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) and the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM).
The US EPA’s ruling will show how serious the US government views the threat of climate change, says EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, but it is not a substitute for domestic legislation on a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases.
“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” said Jackson. “This continues our work towards clean energy reform that will cut GHGs and reduce the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our national security and our economy.”
The EPA’s findings will allow it to impose GHG standards on some new on-road vehicles, which account for more than 23 per cent of US GHG emissions.
US President Barack Obama had hoped that legislators in the US would have agreed on the creation of a cap-and-trade system for tacking GHG emissions before the start of the Copenhagen talks but proposed legislation is still under discussion in the Senate.
Obama is due to attend the Copenhagen talks at the end of the two-week meeting. The Whitehouse recently announced that the US would be prepared to commit to an emissions reduction target of 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020 provided that China and other emerging economies make robust mitigation contributions.
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