EU, UN call on US to do more to fight climate change

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made the case on 3 November for a global deal on climate change on the Capitol Hill. The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall gave Merkel a chance to urge the US to take bold action to combat global warming in a speech to a joint session of the US Congress.
While the invitation was intended to mark the end of the Cold War when the Berlin Wall was brought down on November 9, 1989, Merkel delivered a strong plea for Congress to make sure the US gets on board and cut CO2 emissions.
“We all know we have no time to lose,” Merkel told US lawmakers. “In December, the world will look to us, to the Europeans and to the Americans. And it is true, there can be no agreement without China and India,” Merkel said through a translator. “But I’m convinced, once we in Europe and America show ourselves ready to adopt binding agreements, we will also be able to persuade China and India to join in.”
Earlier in the day, Markel met with US President Barack Obama. She found a ready audience in Obama, who has made combating warming a top priority. “The United States, Germany and countries around the world, I think, are all beginning to recognize why it is so important that we work in common in order to stem the potential catastrophe that can result if we continue to see global warming continue unabated,” Obama said.
The EU wants wealthy economies to commit to reach emission reduction goals by 2020 under the UN treaty to be hammered out in Copenhagen. The upper house of the US Congress, the Senate, is threatening to undermine Obama’s push for a deal in Copenhagen because it may not pass a climate bill before the talks begin December 7. The House of Representatives passed a bill earlier this year.
Only about 100 world leaders have ever addressed a joint session of Congress. The only previous German leader to have done so was Konrad Adenauer in 1957, during the deep chill of the Cold War when divided Germany was the geographic and political frontier between the West and the communist Eastern Bloc.
Today, as a united power and industrial engine, united Germany has become a key leader in the fight against climate change, in addition to providing an important link to the US in trans-Atlantic relations.
A day earlier, during the Barcelona Climate Change talks, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer attempted to decrease the growing rift between the developed and the developing nations. He called on the United States to be clearer about how it intended to financially help poorer countries to protect the global climate. He also accused the US of not making enough efforts to fight climate change.
EU leaders on October 30 reached a compromise on how much money to offer developing countries to help them fight climate change. But the compromise only came after leaders delayed a key debate on how to split the resulting bill between themselves until after the Copenhagen meeting. The EU’s 27 national leaders endorsed estimates by the European Commission that rich nations will have to offer developing countries around €100 billion per year by 2020. Western governments would pay between €22 billion and €50 billion towards that sum.
As UN experts from 181 countries met in Barcelona for the last round of talks before the Copenhagen climate conference on 7-18 December, de Boer said Washington needed to be clearer about its national goals in reducing greenhouse emissions.
Without the US making such an effort, it would be difficult to reach an agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen on December 7-18, de Boer said. The targets that industrialized countries generally had put on the table were “clearly not ambitious enough,” he said.
A vague result in the Danish capital would make subsequent negotiations even more complicated, de Boer cautioned, warning that a failure in Copenhagen could lead to a “common disaster.”
The five-day talks in Barcelona were bringing together more than 4,000 delegates representing governments and organizations. A “terrible future” awaited the world if “urgent” measures were not taken to protect the climate, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said at the inauguration of the meeting.
At the start of the meeting, Greenpeace demonstrators climbed up cranes at the building site of the unfinished Sagrada Familia cathedral, hanging up banners urging the international community to “save the climate.”
Countries such as China, India, Brazil or South Africa were tabling important proposals, making those made by industrialized countries often look less ambitious in comparison, de Boer and Martin Kaiser, a representative of the environmental group Greenpeace, said. Kaiser also described the US as “the main problem” in the fight against global warming.

 

 

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03.11 19:34  3  i  836  
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2ND ROUNDUP: Merkel urges US Congress on climate change
By Mike McCarthy, dpa
Eds: Clarifies time element in graf 7; epa photos available
Washington (dpa) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the US Congress on Tuesday by calling for the United States and Europe to “tear down the walls of today” and reach an agreement on reducing climate change.

“We all know we have no time to lose,” Merkel told US lawmakers, who are struggling to pass legislation to curb greenhouse gases, a key part of President Barack Obama’s agenda to take the lead in the international efforts to rein in global warming.

Merkel met earlier with Obama before becoming the first German chancellor since Konrad Adenauer in 1957 to address a joint session of Congress. She urged the United States to work closely with Europe to reach an agreement ahead of the UN summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December. Doubts have been raised about whether Obama can sign a bill by then.

The goal of the Copenhagen talks is to secure an international pact to cut the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change by 2020, but a bill has stalled in the majority Democratic Senate in part because of Republican opposition. Republicans fear the inability to bring emerging economic powers like China and India into a climate pact will leave the United States at a competitive disadvantage.

But Merkel said the United States and Europe had to take the lead to encourage other countries to recognize the threat of global warming and agree to tackle it.

“In December, the world will look to us, to the Europeans and to the Americans. And it is true, there can be no agreement without China and India,” Merkel said through a translator. “But I’m convinced, once we in Europe and America show ourselves ready to adopt binding agreements, we will also be able to persuade China and India to join in.”

Congress invited Merkel to speak before Congress to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall, which took place on November 9, 1989, but she had vowed she would also use the occasion to push for action on climate change, which has been a cornerstone of her international diplomacy.

Merkel received several rounds of applause during her address that also mentioned Iran, the Middle East peace process and the ongoing fight in Afghanistan. Merkel devoted the first part of her speech to reflecting on the US support for Germany since World War II that contributed to the Wall’s collapse and the subsequent reunification of the country.

“We Germans know how much we owe to you, our American friends, and we shall never - I personally shall never - ever forget this,” she said.

Merkel met with Obama as his administration conducts a review of the strategy in Afghanistan, where situation has dramatically worsened in the last two years and public support in both countries for the war has fallen.

Merkel told Congress that she remains committed to Afghanistan and pointed out that Germany’s contribution of soldiers to the NATO-led mission is the third largest of any country. She also said Berlin will work closely with the government of President Hamid Karzai, whose re-election was confirmed on Monday.

“The international community’s mission in Afghanistan is without any doubt a tough one,” she said. “It demands a lot from all of us. And it now needs to be transferred to the next phase, as soon as the new Afghan government is in office.”

The German chancellor also warned Iran that it could face “tough” new sanctions if it does not take steps to alleviate Western concerns about its atomic activities, saying there would be “zero tolerance” for a nuclear armed Iran.

“Zero tolerance needs to be shown when there is a risk of weapons of mass destruction falling, for example, into the hands of Iran and threatening our security,” she said.

There will not be unlimited patience with Iran in the ongoing negotiations to persuade Tehran to come clean about its nuclear work, said said, denouncing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for trivializing the Holocaust and rejecting Israel’s right to exist.

“A nuclear bomb in the hands of an Iranian president who denies the Holocaust, threatens Israel and denies Israel the right to exist is not acceptable,” she said. “Whoever threatens Israel also threatens us.”

During the meeting at the White House, Obama praised Merkel for her leadership in Europe and on global warming.

“Chancellor Merkel has been an extraordinary leader on the issue of climate change,” Obama said. “And the United States, Germany and countries around the world I think are all beginning to recognize why it is so important that we work in common in order to stem the potential catastrophe” of climate change.

Climate change was expected to be high on the agenda later Tuesday when Obama hosts the EU-US summit. dpa mm aw