United Nation's Group Releases GHG Reduction Document
Talks continue this week as world leaders come to Copenhagen.
Compiled by staff
Published: Dec 15, 2009
In Copenhagen Friday, a United Nations ad-hoc working group stepped forward with a new document outlining greenhouse-gas reductions over the next 40 years. The text provides a range of options for the key questions, including how developed and major emerging economies would cut their carbon output, and what would be the upper limit of global temperature rise that policymakers would be willing to tolerate. The text is silent on how much money rich countries would give poor ones to cope with global warming.
The document presents an outline for a possible deal, in which industrial nations would collectively cut their emissions by 2020 by 25% to 45% compared with 1990 levels. At the same time major developing countries would reduce their emissions by 15% to 30%. The long-term goal is to cut emissions between 50% and 95% by 2050.
Still, final resolution may not be smooth sailing as the more than 100 world leaders meet in Copenhagen this week. U.S. special climate envoy Todd Stern rejected language requiring binding cuts of greenhouse-gas emissions for industrialized countries compared with voluntary ones by major emerging economies if they were not funded by the developed world.
In other news from Copenhagen, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a new Renewable and Efficiency Deployment Initiative. Funded through the World Bank's Strategic Climate Fund, the program will accelerate deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies in developing countries thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions, fighting energy poverty and improving public health for the most vulnerable, particularly women and children.
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