"Climate-change" satellite

illus. courtesy NASA

Australia, the United States and Norway are among the latest of 47 countries to send negotiating targets to the United Nations for talks in Copenhagen aimed at bringing about a worldwide climate treaty.

With billions of dollars in new funding for renewable resources and carbon-trading at home, U.S. political support for all things green has snowballed. In their letter to the UN Climate Change Secretariat, U.S. policymakers offered financial backing for whatever climate deal emerged when the world’s energy and environment ministers meet in Copenhagen this December.

“The United States supports a Copenhagen agreed outcome that recognizes the magnitude and seriousness of what science demands … and recognizes the diversity of countries’ circumstances,” the American negotiating text read.

In a reversal of its past Kyoto-climate stance, Washington said it was calling for a “strong international agreement” in Copenhagen with “robust targets and ambitious actions” that’ll become U.S. law. The text stopped short of linking to the spirit of Kyoto, although finding an “emissions pathway to 2050” was a new U.S. demand. U.S. policy now aims to give all parties to the deal binding 2020 carbon-cutting targets, even those, like Canada and Australia that have chosen their own emissions targets.

The U.S. text offered American dollars for developing countries hit hardest by climate change. It its text, Norway urged that poor countries, without delay, begin forming plans to correct the damage wrought by a newly savage earth before funds can enter national disaster “registries”.

Ahead of more climate talks set for Bonn Germany starting 1 June 2009, Australia has agreed to cut carbon pollution 25 percent of year-2000’s levels by 2020, although the country’s plans to fund emissions trading and carbon-capture and storage — the oil and gas industry’s gift to emissions cuts — have been pushed back a year.

But the Australian offer is conditional upon the world agreeing to cuts of 450 parts per million. Otherwise, the Aussies take cut their emissions-reduction target for 2020 to fiver percent.

It’s understood the poorest countries would have to cut their emissions by up to 40 percent to clear the Australian government’s condition.

Tags: carbon