The final meeting of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) was supposed to commence early in the evening on December 16. It instead commenced at 4.45 in the morning on December 15, after negotiations went through the night. The meeting was considering a new version of a text on long-term cooperative action that is to be considered by world leaders over the next few days. In this meeting, the United States delegate watered down the nature of any mitigation commitments that would be required from developed countries. The text that he is referring to (with the changes included) is here.
A fundamental problem with any international treaty is that for it to work it has to be ratified by its Parties, in this case including the United States Senate.
At an earlier meeting of the Conference of Parties, when discussing Tuvalu’s proposal for a fair, ambitious and legally binding deal, the Tuvalu negotiator made some eloquent remarks on the role of the US Senate in these negotiations, noting the irony that the fate of the world is in the hands of a few US Senators.
December 17, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Hi Peter, the link to the text seems to be pointing to the wrong document, I’m afraid.
I gather the gist of the US position is that they’ll promise whatever targets they deem nationally appropriate, rather than accepting one based on an overall “developed country target” Is that it?
December 18, 2009 at 1:30 am
Thanks Robert, the link should be fixed now. I think that is part of the US position, but the US is also questioning developed countries having comparable targets or comparable legal form.
December 27, 2009 at 7:39 am
Some day soon, we will find adequate ways to directly acknowledge the global challenges of our times by helping us “connect the dots” between human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities on one hand and climate destabilization, natural resource dissipation and and environmental degradation on the other.
It seems to me that any “truth” about Earth’s ecology and climate science needs to be coupled with the best available science about human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of our planetary home.
Threats to human wellbeing and environmental health cannot be reasonably addressed and sensibly overcome until the root causes of the threats are acknowledged, validated by science, and widely shared in the human community, I suppose.