Climate Talks Start With Calls for New Global Deal
Date: 28-Aug-07
Country: AUSTRIA
Author: Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
"Climate change is already a harsh reality, a massive
obstacle to development," Austrian Environment Minister Josef
Proell told the opening ceremony at a meeting of more than 1,000
senior officials, activists and other experts.
"Climate change is a huge challenge that can only be dealt
with at a global level," he said. "We do not have much time."
Activists from Greenpeace, who complain of the glacial pace
of world climate talks, demonstrated outside the Vienna
conference hall with a giant balloon and activists dressed up as
giant eyes saying "the world is watching".
The Aug 27-31 Vienna meeting is meant to pave the way for a
deal among environment ministers meeting in December in Bali,
Indonesia, to launch formal 2-year talks on a broader successor
to the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 35 industrial nations to cut
emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
The United States, the top emitter of greenhouse gases from
burning fossil fuels, is not part of Kyoto.
President George W. Bush said Kyoto was too costly and
wrongly excluded 2012 targets for developing nations such as
China and India. He has, however, signalled willingness to join
in negotiating a new, long-term worldwide pact.
Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate official, said there
were "many encouraging political signals building momentum for
action on climate change" in recent months, such as Bush's
pledge to seek "substantial cuts" in emissions.
UN reports this year have blamed humans for global warming
over the past 50 years and forecast worsening disruptions from
floods, droughts, heat waves and rising seas.
MONSOONS, FIRES
Proell, the Austrian host, pointed to monsoons in South Asia
and forest fires in tinder-dry Greece as yet further signs of
the type of weather that might become more frequent in future.
"Today the world's biggest problem is the problem of climate
change," said Monyane Moleleki, Lesotho's environment minister,
whose country faces worsening droughts.
Moleleki praised the European Union for saying that it would
cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020 and said
other nations should work out long-term goals.
But environmentalists said the world response was falling
far short of the vows. Despite lofty promises by heads of state
"when I look around on the ground here I get nervous", said Hans
Verolme, climate expert at the WWF environmental group.
Bill Hare, of Greenpeace, said many countries were talking
about a need for the Bali talks to agree a vague "road map" for
working out new commitments. He said governments needed to agree
a firmer "mandate" to negotiate legally binding commitments.
