Wealthy countries should increase their emission commitments if a global pact on climate change is to be reached next year, China's top UN climate negotiator said Friday. Emission commitments made so far by developed countries account for just 30 percent of the global total, said Xie Zhenhua, China's chief negotiator at UN climate talks, citing researchers' estimates. "This is a situation that we do not wish to see," he told reporters in Beijing, arguing that wealthy countries have failed to take the lead to cut emissions and provide funding and technological support to developing nations as promised. --
Agence France-Presse, 19 September 2014
India is expected to stick to its tough stand on climate negotiation and make no new announcement at the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s climate summit in New York this month, which UN officials said would be a major turning point in the global approach to the issue. A senior government official told ET on the conditions of anonymity that while several factors contributed to the prime minister’s decision [not to attend the UN climate summit], the environment ministry had in its input stressed that UN Secretary General’s initiative was not “important” as it was not part of the negotiations and that the Prime Minister “should not attend the meet.” --Urmi Goswami,
Economic Times of India, 16 September 2014
Australia is refusing to take a plan for deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions to a special world leaders’ climate summit in New York next week, rejecting calls from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who will represent the Abbott government at the conference on Tuesday, ruled out bringing to the table beefed-up emissions reduction targets, despite hopes the meeting would build momentum towards signing a new post-2020 global climate change deal in Paris next year. -- Lisa Cox,
The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 September 2014
A U.N. summit on climate change next week will test rich nations’ willingness to fill a near-empty fund to help the poor, but pledges are likely to be far short of developing nations’ hopes for $15 billion in 2014. Many rich nations are struggling to maintain aid budgets as they focus on spurring growth and jobs at home. The funding is part of an increasing squeeze for developed nations, which set a goal in 2009 of channelling an annual $100 billion from 2020 to help the poor cope with climate change. --Alister Doyle,
Reuters, 18 September 2014
The idea for the UN climate summit is Mr. Ban’s, who has made global warming the overriding mission of the United Nations since becoming secretary general in 2007. No previous secretary general has evinced so little interest in the great matters of peace and war and has so little to show for his efforts. Were it not for the prestige of his job, Mr. Ban would cut a hapless figure, over the years making a string of histrionic warnings and absurdly optimistic forecasts of the imminence of a global warming treaty. --Rupert Darwall,
National Review, 18 September 2014
The West’s failure at Copenhagen marks a milestone in the shift in power from the West to the East. Since then, the West’s decline has continued. It will be in an even weaker position to get a binding treaty in Paris next year than it was in Copenhagen, an eventuality the Obama administration appears already to have conceded. But it would be a mistake to think that agreeing on an effective treaty is still the prime motivation of Western governments. The game now is to keep the process going indefinitely. They have committed their countries to immensely costly de-carbonization policies. Without the prospect of coordinated global action, any objective justification for them vanishes. --Rupert Darwall,
National Review, 18 September 2014
