Poor urge deep climate cuts; UN says out of reach

BARCELONA, Spain, (Reuters) – Developing countries  said yesterday they risked “total destruction” unless the  rich stepped up the fight against climate change to a level that  even the United Nations says is out of reach.

The top U.S. climate diplomat Todd Stern blamed a “17-year  divide” between rich and poor nations for slow progress at the  U.N. talks meant to agree a global climate deal in Copenhagen in  December, and slammed “debating society” pranks.

Keeping up pressure in Barcelona, the final preparatory  session for the December meeting, the poor said that even the  most ambitious offers by the European Union, tougher than most  nations, were far too weak for a new U.N. climate pact.
“The result of that is to condemn developing countries to a  total destruction of their livelihoods, their economies. Their  land, their forests will all be destroyed. And for what  purpose?” said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan, chair of  the Group of 77 and China, representing poor nations.

“Anything south of 40 (percent) means that Africa’s  population, Africa’s land mass is offered destruction,” he told  a news conference.

Developing countries at the Barcelona talks insisted that  rich nations should cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40  percent below 1990 levels by 2020 — far more than on offer.

But even the United Nations said that would involve too  wrenching a shift. African nations resumed negotiations in  Barcelona on Tuesday after a one-day partial boycott following  agreement on more focus on cuts by the rich.

“I think to get to minus 40 is too heavy a lift,” Yvo de  Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told Reuters.  Such a shift would require “going back to the drawing board” and  would economically “come at a huge cost,” he said.

In Washington, the top U.S. diplomat on climate change, Todd  Stern, criticised entrenched positions in talks since the world  agreed the U.N. climate convention in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro.

“The divide between developed and developing countries that  has run down the center of climate change discussions for the  past 17 years is still alive and well,” he told a panel in the  U.S. House of Representatives.

“We are not engaged right now in a debating society”, he  said of the international talks.

So far, developed nations are planning cuts averaging  between 11 and 15 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels to slow  climate change that could lead to more droughts, floods, rising  sea levels, more powerful cyclones and a spread of disease.

Sudan’s Di-Aping said “in real and absolute terms (the  effort) is minimal”. He said rich nations spent billions of  dollars on solving the financial crisis or on defence.

Cuts of 40 percent as demanded by African nations “would be  extremely difficult,” said Anders Turesson, head of the Swedish  delegation which holds the European Union’s rotating presidency.

The United States is the only nation outside the existing  Kyoto Protocol for curbing industrialised nations’ emissions to  2012 and the Senate is debating a bill that would cut emissions  by about 7 percent below 1990 levels.