Denmark, December 08: The biggest climate talks in history opened on Monday with a stark U.N. warning about risks of rising seas and desertification and a prediction by hosts Denmark that a deal to combat climate change was “within reach”.
In the United States, a White House official said the Environmental Protection Agency would rule on Monday that greenhouse gases endangered human health, allowing it to regulate emissions without Congressional action and so strengthening Washington’s climate hand.
In Copenhagen, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told delegates from 190 nations that momentum was building for a deal and that 110 world leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama would attend a summit at the end of the 7th- 18th Dec talks.
The presence of so many leaders meant “an opportunity the world cannot afford to miss,” he said of the talks, aimed at agreeing a pact to replace the existing U.N. Kyoto Protocol that runs to 2012. “A deal is within our reach.”
Politicians and scientists urged the meeting, attended by 15,000 delegates, to agree immediate action to curb greenhouse gases and come up with billions of dollars in aid and technology to help poorer countries limit their emissions.
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. panel of climate scientists, said action was needed to avoid cyclones, heatwaves, floods, and possible loss of the Greenland ice sheet, which could mean a sea level rise of 7 metres over centuries.
He said that even a widely accepted goal of limiting global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times could still bring an increase in sea levels that “could submerge several small island states and Bangladesh.”
“The evidence is now overwhelming that the world would benefit greatly from early action, and that delay would only lead to costs in economic and human terms that would become progressively high,” he said.
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He defended the findings by his panel after leaked emails from a British university last month led sceptics to say that researchers had conspired to exaggerate the evidence. He said there were rigorous checks on all research.
“Hopefully it will only be a small blip in the history of this process,” Jonathan Pershing, the head of the U.S. delegation who used to be an author on Pachauri’s panel, said of the scandal, dubbed “Climategate”.
Many nations say that the United States is the key to a deal in Copenhagen. Obama is aiming to cut U.S. emissions by 3 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 but legislation is stalled in the Senate.
The European Union said it may sharpen its carbon-cutting bid if the United States paid for more carbon cuts in poor nations, especially to curb deforestation.
Developing nations including small island states, which are most vulnerable to rising sea levels, demanded more action.
Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Copenhagen was starting with two problems — a lack of U.S. climate legislation and “issues of trust between north and south.”
Developing states called for more action by the rich.
“So far we have not seen any real leadership” from rich nations, said Ibrahim Mirghani Ibrahim of Sudan, speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.
Dessima Williams, of Grenada, speaking on behalf of small island states at risk from rising seas, said the group “will not accept a made-for-television solution…We are here to save ourselves from burning and from drowning.”
Outside the conference centre, delegates walked past a slowly melting ice sculpture of a mermaid, modelled on the Danish fairy tale of “The Little Mermaid”, as a call for action.
The attendance of the leaders and pledges to curb emissions by all the top emitters — led by China, the United States, Russia and India — have raised hopes for an accord after sluggish progress in negotiations over the past two years.
World leaders did not attend when environment ministers agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.
A Fijian climate campaigner broke down in tears in an appeal for the talks to save her island nation from rising seas. She then handed conference officials some Danish Lego blocks, meant to symbolise the foundations of an ambitious climate pact.
—Agencies