UN climate talks speed Third World investments

By Alister Doyle and Mary Milliken

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Negotiators at U.N. climate talks
agreed on Thursday to speed investments in clean-energy
projects in the Third World as host Canada struggled to enlist
the United States in a long-term fight against global warming.

Negotiators from 160 nations, overcoming an objection by
Saudi Arabia, also agreed on a set of rules to ensure
compliance with the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol, which
obliges many developed nations to cut emissions of
heat-trapping gases,

“There seems to be a moderately positive mood,” British
Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett said of progress at the
November 28-December 9 talks. But she warned of a “false
euphoria” and said negotiations could drag on into Saturday.

Negotiators agreed to streamline a plan that might channel
$100 billion to projects such as hydropower in Honduras or wind
energy in China to help cut the use of fossil fuels blamed for
warming the planet.

A draft decision to go to more than 90 ministers reassured
investors the “Clean Development Mechanism,” or CDM, would last
beyond 2012, when the first phase of Kyoto runs out. The CDM
has been hampered by bureaucracy and underfunding.

Under the CDM, rich nations can invest in clean energy
projects, such as generating electricity by burning the waste
from sugar cane in Brazil, and claim credits back home for
reducing world emissions of greenhouse gases.

So far, more than 40 such projects have been approved.

Under the rules approved to ensure Kyoto compliance, any
country that overshoots its targets will have to make up the
shortfall, and an extra 30 percent penalty, in the next period.

Saudi Arabia’s call that each country’s national
legislation approve a measure to ensure compliance was dropped
on grounds it would have bogged down Kyoto.

The talks were deadlocked on how to widen a fight against
climate change beyond Kyoto, a tiny step in a drive to brake a
warming that many scientists say will lead to wrenching changes
such as more powerful storms, desertification, extinction of
species and rising sea levels.

DEADLOCK

Canada circulated a new text suggesting two years of
U.N.-led discussions among all countries about new ways to
fight global warming after the United States, the world’s
biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, said it was not
interested. Washington says emission caps threaten jobs and
industry and instead backs voluntary targets.

Developing nations lined up to say rich countries could not
expect the poor to give up burning coal, oil and gas — all
exploited with no limits by rich nations as the locomotives of
economic growth since the Industrial Revolution.

“Calls for developing countries to take up greenhouse
abatement commitments in some guise or other are misplaced,”
Indian Environment Minister Thiru Raja said, saying any brakes
on emissions would jeopardize a fight against poverty.

U.S. President George W. Bush has denounced Kyoto as an
economic straitjacket and is promoting big investments in new
technologies like hydrogen and a plan to cooperate with China,
India, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

But European Union Commissioner Stavros Dimas said,
“Climate change is a global threat that requires a global
response.” He noted recent opinion polls showed 75 percent of
Americans were concerned about climate change.

Environmentalists urged Kyoto members to agree to deeper
cuts and forget Bush. Many Kyoto members worry a pact without
Washington from 2012 will sap their economic growth and hand
U.S. businesses a competitive advantage.

“How many ways do they have to say ‘No’ for people to get
it?” Stephen Guilbeault of Greenpeace said of U.S. opposition.

A group of protesters sang revised versions of hits by
former Beatle and peace activist John Lennon on the 25th
anniversary of his murder in New York to urge wider action.

“We all live in a carbon-intensive world,” they chanted to
the tune of the Beatles hit “Yellow Submarine.”