Plan B for climate-change agreement
Negotiations leading up to December's climate-change summit are not going smoothly. So what can the summit still achieve? John Dimsdale reports.
A green world (iStockPhoto)
More on Sustainability
TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: Negotiations leading up to December's climate-change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark -- not going smoothly. Yesterday, the director of the UN team coordinating the talks admitted Copenhagen is unlikely to produce a global treaty. So what's Plan B? Marketplace's John Dimsdale reports from Washington.
John Dimsdale: One big speed bump on the road to Copenhagen is Congress has yet to limit carbon emissions. Stuart Eizenstat was U.S. negotiator at the last UN climate conference in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. He says the Copenhagen meeting can still achieve what he calls a "framework agreement."
STUART EIZENSTAT: In which the basic elements of a treaty are developed at Copenhagen and the details are then filled out particularly after the United States Congress hands President Obama a cap-and-trade bill that he can sign.
Eizenstat says any future global agreement has to be more flexible since U.S. caps on emissions won't be anywhere near Europe's.
Paul Bledsoe at the National Commission on Energy Policy agrees a framework agreement will keep the momentum going.
PAUL BLEDSOE: If it involves China and India and U.S. and other non-Kyoto signatories, it would be a very important step forward.
Bledsoe expects a new worldwide binding treaty can still be achieved -- next year.
In Washington I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace.
Comments
Comment | Refresh
From Ventura, CA, 10/28/2009
Re-Copenhagen agreement. Climate change caused by excessive carbon & other gases &
already it looks like no new treaty will be signed! The most important event in the world-limit carbon dioxide gases or an acceleration in the rise of the oceans world wide, which would cause hundreds of millions of deaths & no new treaty is expected! Pretty sad
expectations.
Post a Comment: Please be civil, brief and relevant.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. All comments are moderated. Marketplace reserves the right to edit any comments on this site and to read them on the air if they are extra-interesting. Please read the Comment Guidelines before posting.
You must be 13 or over to submit information to American Public Media. The information entered into this form will not be used to send unsolicited email and will not be sold to a third party. For more information see Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.