Todd came, Todd saw, Todd threw a spanner in the works.
No commentsA lot of newsprint will go into reporting and analysing Todd Stern’s statements from this evening in Copenhagen. Here’s the short version: “We don’t care”.
In a press conference held just hours after he arrived in Copenhagen, Stern said the US does not owe a climate debt or reparations. He announced that only ‘limited’ funding would be made available for fighting climate change impacts in developing countries and that too to only the poorest countries. He also added that developing countries must ‘committ to nationally appropriate mitigation actions in an international agreement’. No developing country will accept this.
Perhaps Mr Stern’s statement reflects a US efforts to stall negotiations long enough for world leaders to get desperate for an agreement …any agreement (did I hear the words ‘Danish draft’?)! That way, come the closing ceremony, it won’t look like they’ve failed.
An Indian negotiator said today that he will block any draft agreement from going to world leaders which is not part of the formal UN negotiations. His exact words: ‘We’d rather go into overtime than sign an uncooked agreement.’
So where do the talks go from here? Heaven knows. The lines have been firmly drawn in the sand. Expect a lot of back-room negotiations and horse-trading before we see anything coming through.
