EUR: Rudd fears leaders unable to reach agreement on climate
Fri Jul 10 20:03:42 EST 2009
Rudd and Rasmussen on Thursday signed off on an agreement with 14 other developed and developing countries, including the United States, Britain and China, meeting at L'Aqulia that global warming should be held to two degrees celsius in an attempt to combat climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the leaders failed to get an agreement on setting any specific targets to reduce emissions, leading green groups to brand the talks a failure.
Developing countries walked away from the goal of halving their emissions by 2050 while the G8 nations - the US, Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Russia - committed to an 80 per cent cut by 2050.
Rudd told Rasmussen he was worried negotiators would be unable to break a deadlock between developed and developing countries over emissions targets in time to reach agreement at Copenhagen.
"Our negotiators don't have a sufficiently flexible mandate in relation to the negotiations to begin bringing about a tight outcome," Rudd said.
"I am quite worried about it."
Rudd's comments were picked up by television crews filming the pair at the start of bilateral talks held on the fringes of the final day of the leaders' meeting in the rural Italian town on Friday.
A new climate pact is due to be inked at Copenhagen in December and the Italian talks were aimed at kick-starting the difficult negotiations.
Rudd earlier had described talks as having made "modest" but significant steps forward and that the two-degree goal would help frame greenhouse targets for everyone.
Experts say holding warming to two degrees means an atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases of 450 parts per million.
This means Australia will cut emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 and by at least 80 per cent by 2050.
Australia has promised to reduce emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.
Rudd said the 2020 target was more important.
"If we simply talk about long-term, very long-term aspirational targets, that leaves action too late," he said.
He talked up Australia's efforts to clean up coal as he relaunched an Australian-led institute with world leaders including US President Barack Obama alongside.
The Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute aims to develop technology to capture the emissions from coal-fired power stations and bury them underground.
The institute is crucial to the future of coal and Australia is the world's biggest coal exporter.
Obama later told reporters that the leaders' meeting had resolved to join forces to drive the development of clean carbon technologies.
"A number of countries have already agreed to take the lead on developing particular technologies, including solar," he said.
"Australia, for example, is creating a new centre ... (which) I think points to the ability for us to pool our resources in order to see the technological breakthroughs that are going to be necessary in order for us to solve this problem."
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said the failure of the Italian talks to set targets was very worrying.
Rich nations were not taking the lead on setting targets so the talks were deadlocked, he said.
"The wealthy countries are so short of what's required ... we're not going to stay within the safe zone."
The lower end of Australia's emissions reduction target range - five to 25 per cent - would fail to hold warming to two degrees, Senator Brown said.
