U.N. climate talks stagnate despite public worries

Governments are making scant progress toward extending a U.N. pact to fight global warming despite mounting public concern about climate change and U.N. warnings it poses a threat as great as war, experts say.

“We’re not seeing governments saying ‘yes, we’ll make new commitments’,” one U.N. official said of negotiations sponsored by the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn.
The world’s top climate scientists raised pressure for action with a report last month which said it was more than 90 percent certain that human activities led by burning fossil fuels are causing global warming.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. climate panel, said it was still hard to predict the political impact of the report, which also warned of more droughts, floods and rising seas in coming centuries.

“I’m reminded of what Chairman Mao said when he was asked what he thought of the influence of the French Revolution on the world: ‘It’s too early to tell’,” he told Reuters.

Reuters