Soaring Living Costs Cloud UN Climate Talks

UN-led climate talks kick off on Monday in Germany with experts trying to forge a global warming pact facing a new challenge from critics who say climate change measures are partly to blame for higher food and energy prices.

The meeting is the second of eight which aim to secure a global climate deal by the end of next year, to come into force after the first round of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
The Bonn talks focus on the “toolkit” of steps which can curb rising emissions of greenhouse gas such as carbon dioxide, which scientists say risk catastrophic climate change.

Senior officials from more than 160 countries face the difficulty, however, that many such measures — including carbon taxes and emissions trading — deliberately raise energy costs by penalising carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.

They are controversial options as record oil prices hit motorists and electricity consumers worldwide.

Meanwhile carbon-cutting biofuels have helped drive up food prices by using food crops to make an ethanol alternative to gasoline.

The United Nations’ climate change chief Yvo de Boer cautioned on Sunday against blaming biofuels too much.

Planet Ark