With or Without the US?

By staff reporter TANG SHUBIAO

  According an article in the November 29 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Todd Stern, the United States Special Envoy for Climate Change, has tried to rebut the challenge that the relief funding was simply a recombination of old funds. He retorted this view, saying that in the past years the America government had set up an additional climate fund on the basis of the foreign relief fund, which fully demonstrated that America had matched its commitment. He said that the United States would never support any environmental policy that required it to control its carbon emissions, and that if China and other developing countries wanted such a policy, they could go ahead with it.

 Since the UN Climate Change Conference opened in Cancun, Mexico on November 29, all eyes have been on what direction the US will take. In the opinion of some commentators, the US is a decisive factor in whether the Cancun conference can achieve a widely-accepted agreement. But Yang Ailun, an environmental activist with Greenpeace, has a different view.

 “Right down the line, climate change negotiations have come up against the inevitable challenge of how to deal with the problem of America. Should we keep on waiting for America or press on with reaching an agreement on global climate protection without the US?  Greenpeace urges governments of all nations not to allow the Cancun conference to stall because of the US issue, but to seize the great opportunity of low-carbon development, driving forward the international climate talks,” says Ms Yang.

 Yang believes that the Cancun conference should be a foundation stone on which a global climate protection agreement is built. The Copenhagen summit of 2009 raised qualms on whether multilateral climate talks could produce an effective international agreement. Greenpeace calls for each government to grab the Cancun opportunity to invigorate global climate negotiations. To keep global temperature rise below 2 °C, we need a strong global climate agreement; the Cancun conference should lay a solid foundation for realizing such an agreement.

  But in order to do this, says Ms. Yang, Cancun must produce agreement on issues such as climate fund, technology transfer and forest protection, on climate fund in particular. With climate change exacerbating the crisis of the poorest and weakest countries, the developed nations must meet their promises of US $30 billion initial funds as quickly as possible, and set up a long-term climate fund in Cancun, transparent both in management and sourcing.