Meeting on Climate Opens With Calls for Urgent Action

Meeting on Climate Opens With Calls for Urgent Action
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: December 7, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/science/earth/08climate.html?ref=global-home


COPENHAGEN — A much-anticipated global meeting of nearly 200 nations — all seeking what has so far been elusive common ground on the issue of climate change — began here on Monday with an impassioned airing of what leaders here called the political and moral imperatives at hand.

“The clock has ticked down to zero,” said the United Nations’ climate chief, Yvo de Boer. “After two years of negotiation, the time has come to deliver.”

From now until Dec. 18, delegates will try to hammer out some of the most vexing details involved in the pursuit of a global climate accord.

While the critical action will unfold much later in the process, when higher-level ministers and, ultimately, heads of state arrive, the opening day of the conference was an opportunity for the United Nations to nurture a sense of mission and for delegates to begin staking out their positions.

Among the most difficult hurdles, many participants acknowledged throughout the day, are achieving adequate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions — particularly from big polluters like the United States and China.

So, too, are securing commitments from wealthy nations to deliver what could ultimately be hundreds of billions of dollars in financing to poor countries, which argue that they are ill equipped to deal with a problem they did little to create.

Several countries announced new emissions goals in the days leading up to the meeting, including China, Brazil, the United States, India and South Africa — although many participants have noted that the targets are far too low to keep rising temperatures in check in coming decades.

The pledges so far are “not going to get us as far we need to go, to really stay within the two-degree limit,” said Koko Warner, an observer with the United Nations University in Bonn, Germany. He was referring to scientists’ recommendations that temperature increases be capped at two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

“We don’t want to admit it, because the consequences are so bad,” she said.

Still, speakers at the conference’s opening plenary session — which began with a video appeal from children across the world to save them from what looked like an apocalyptic future of deserts and rising seas — were clearly aiming to spur negotiators forward.

After several hundred delegates and observers settled inside the main conference hall of the Bella Center to music from a trumpeter, a harpist and the Danish Girls Choir, Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister presiding over the conference, noted the recent string of emissions commitments by various countries.

“Every positive announcement will improve our chances of staying below the two degrees Celsius target,” she said. “But as we all know only too well, we are not there yet.”

“This goes for financing as well,” Ms. Hedegaard said, noting that arriving at a consensus on that issue “may be an even bigger challenge” than emissions cuts.

Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, spoke before delegates of the urgent need for action. And, alluding to a recent controversy over e-mail messages between scientists hacked from a university computer server, he had pointed remarks for those who “find it difficult to accept” climate change science.

Climate change skeptics have argued that the e-mail shows that the evidence for global warming is less unequivocal than scientists assert.

But Dr. Pachauri ticked off a list of trends that robustly reflect the warming of the global climate. “Internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including the individuals singled out in these e-mail messages,” he said. Both inside and outside the plenary session, the mood among negotiators and other participants was one of cautious optimism.

Jonathan Pershing, the State Department’s special climate envoy, who represented the United States at the opening plenary, said he saw strong signs that the conference would prove critical in getting traction on curbing emissions and helping poor countries that are urgently threatened by climate change — particularly given the decision by more than 100 leaders, including President Obama, to attend.

He said he saw no indication that efforts could be blunted by Saudi Arabia and other countries that have cited the e-mail flap in challenging climate findings.

Outside the Bella Center, calls were growing for conference participants to overcome their differences and deliver results in coming days.

An open letter from a coalition of groups, including Friends of the Earth, the Third World Network and others, accused Danish leaders of “undemocratic practices” and of “convening small and exclusive groups of countries before the Copenhagen meeting.”

The assertion is a reference to rumors that “alternate” treaties are being readied by some big players, including conference organizers, should efforts to resolve differences on the current text prove fruitless.

Meanwhile, 56 newspapers around the world published the same editorial calling for “decisive action” in Copenhagen.

“In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage,” read the editorial, which was widely distributed in a campaign led by Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.”

Continued inaction will ravage the planet and wreak havoc on economies and livelihoods, the editorial’s authors warned.

“The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it,” the editorial said. “We implore them to make the right choice.”

Andrew C. Revkin and James Kanter contributed reporting from Copenhagen.