The United Nations-led Copenhagen climate change talks began with developing nations pressuring industrialized nations to provide greater funding for mitigation programs, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, a representative of the Group of 77, criticized an EU and U.S. proposal for $10 billion of annual funding as robbing "developing countries of their just and equitable and fair share of the atmospheric space."
The New York Times noted that the first decade of the 21st century "appears to be the warmest one in the modern record," according to information from the World Meteorological Organization. Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the international weather agency, found the period has been "warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s, and so on."
Di-Aping called a Danish draft of a protocol emerging from the Copenhagen round of talks an attempt "to treat rich and poor countries as equal" in terms of commitments to cut GHG emissions, The Guardian reported. U.N. climate head Yvo de Boer called the draft "an informal paper" presented for discussion "ahead of the conference," and said talks were "off to a good start."
Chinese climate negotiator Su Wei rebuked industrialized nations for what he called modest goals on emissions reductions, and many environmentalists added their criticism of the draft as an effort to go around the U.N. process. U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern called one proposal for industrialized nations to contribute up to 1 percent of their GDP for mitigation programs "untethered from reality."
Related stories also appeared in the Los Angeles (Calif.) Times, Washington Post blog, Bloomberg, and Reuters.
