U.N. Climate Talks End in Cloud of Discord

Industrialized, Developing Nations Still at Odds Over How and When to Cut Emissions

PARIS, Aug. 31 — A five-day U.N. conference on climate change ended in Vienna on Friday with significant disagreements remaining about how countries should reduce greenhouse gas emissions and daunting estimates about the price tag for combating global warming.

Some industrialized countries balked at adopting language in the conference’s final statement that would have set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. They agreed in the end that this target would be a nonbinding starting point for future discussion.
Many industrialized countries, including the United States, are wary of strict and mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, fearing that such curbs could strike at core sectors of their economies.

Illustrating the range of opinion, the Group of 77 — a bloc of developing nations — said that industrialized countries should target an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Japan on Friday that an equitable solution would base cuts on emissions per person and bring industrialized countries into line with developing ones.

A U.N. study found that it would cost at least $200 billion a year in additional funding to reduce the expected growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and to return them to their current levels in 2030. By contrast, the U.S. government currently devotes about $6 billion a year to climate change programs.

The Washington Post