Obama delays deal on climate change
US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has acknowledged that time has run out for securing a binding deal for tackling global warming at next month’s Copenhagen summit.
But he and other world leaders have rallied around plans to avert a failure at the climate summit that would delay legally binding agreements until 2010 or even later.
“We should not make the perfect the enemy of the good,” Obama told delegates at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation in Singapore.
“Given the time factor and the situation of individual countries we must, in the coming weeks, focus on what is possible,” Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.
“The Copenhagen Agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a deadline for their conclusion,” said the Copenhagen talks host, who flew into Singapore overnight to lay out his proposal at the Asian summit.
Rasmussen’s two-step plan would pave the way for a political accord at the December 7-18 talks, followed by tortuous haggling over legally binding commitments on targets, finance and technology transfer on a slower track, though still with a deadline.
In particular, it would give breathing space for the US Senate to pass carbon-capping legislation, allowing the Obama administration to bring a 2020 target and financing pledges to the table at a major UN climate meeting in Bonn in mid-2010.
Analysts say it needs to pass through the Senate early next year to avoid becoming pushed aside in the run-up to mid-term elections.
“There was an assessment by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full, internationally legally binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days,” said senior US negotiator Michael Froman told reporters after the meeting, which was attended by leaders of the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Australia and Indonesia.