LONDON, Dec 21 — A handful of countries blocked a legally binding deal on climate change in Copenhagen and the talks process needs urgent reform to prevent something similar happening again, Britain’s prime minister said today.
Gordon Brown said the non-binding agreement achieved after rounds of talks in the Danish capital were “at best flawed, at worst chaotic”.
“We will not allow a few countries to hold us back,” he told an environmental meeting in London via a videolink from Scotland. He did not name those countries. “What happened at Copenhagen was a flawed decision-making process.
“We have just got to find a way of moving this process forward.”
Writing in today’s Guardian newspaper, British Climate Change and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband blamed China for blocking emissions targets.
He also implicated Sudan, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba in the failure to strike a deal, aides told the paper.
China said it would treat talks on a binding global climate change pact in 2010 as a struggle over the “right to develop”, a Chinese official said, signalling more tough deal-making will follow the Copenhagen summit.
China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activities and its biggest developing economy, was at the heart of the talks, and bared some its growing assertiveness in grinding late-night sessions.
Miliband later said “four or five countries out of 192” had stood in the way of a deal in Copenhagen.
“My biggest frustration was that we were not arguing about points of substance, we were arguing about procedures,” Miliband told the meeting in London.
The summit in Copenhagen ended with a bare-minimum agreement on Saturday when delegates “noted” an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that fell far short of original goals. — Reuters
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I am not against efforts to reduce pollutant nor agree that China should be allowed with their emittance but what had developed Countries do for the poor ? How many wind turbine you build or solar panel you installed compare to the energey consumption the poor needed for the next 50 years in order to be developed ? Developed countried are only interested to sell arms to the poor Africans yet when the Chinese build roads for them, you are all showing concern about Chinese influence on them but what have you ever do for them ?
The rich western nations has been and will continue capitalising on the developing and poor resources to enrich themselves. No doubt carbon emission in China grows at a pace that no one ever expect 15 years ago, but most of the emissions are for factories that produce products for the Rich West, so that all of you can continue celebrating Christmas with affordable toys and wide variety !!! How many items in your home and your work place is made from or extract from your own backyard ?? If not from the developing and poor, you could still be living in the 90's or even 80's. Did you pay a single cent extra for the carbon emitted to make the toys and bring them all the way to the shelf ?
The failure of the Summite is much regretable but what has the Brits did to fix the pollutant you emitted since the Industrial Revolution ?