Poor demand more from rich to unlock climate talks

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Developing nations demanded deeper emissions cuts from rich nations, particularly the United States, at U.N. climate talks in Denmark on Tuesday, as a study showed that 2009 is the fifth warmest year on record.

The first decade of this century was also the hottest since records began, the World Meteorological Organization said, underscoring the threat scientists say the planet faces from rising temperatures.

A record 15,000 participants at the talks are trying to work out a climate pact to combat rising seas, desertification, floods and cyclones that could devastate economies and ruin the livelihoods of millions of people.

But negotiators are struggling to reach agreement on the depth of emissions cuts needed to slow the pace of climate change and are worried about the cost to their economies of switching from polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy.

"We're off to a good start," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said of the Dec 7-18 talks.

He urged delegates to sort out technical details of an accord but said that the big issues such as emissions targets for rich nations and funds for the poor would have to wait for a December 18 summit that will be attended by over 100 world leaders.

Emission cuts offers from rich nations were far below what was needed, Dessima Williams of Grenada, chair of the 43-nation Alliance of Small Island States, told Reuters. AOSIS wants emissions cut 45 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels.

"Our 45 percent remains on the table. Germany is at 40, the EU as a whole and some other countries are at 30. This is the time to escalate, to be ambitious," she said.

Washington, whose provisional offer to cut emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels works out at just 3 percent below 1990 levels, said on Monday it had legal authority to curb planet-warming emissions, a step delegates cautiously welcomed.

CAUTIOUS

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled that greenhouse gases endanger human health, allowing it to regulate them without legislation from the Senate, where a bill to cut U.S. emissions by 2020 is stalled.

"It's welcome. It's not good enough from where we sit on the outside," Williams said.

India was equally cautious.

"It's for the U.S. to indicate how that will be reflected here in the negotiations in terms of targets and how those targets are going to be enforced," said Shyam Saran, India's special envoy for climate change.

De Boer said the ruling was "like having a stick behind the door...something to fall back on" for President Barack Obama.

"I think that will boost peoples' confidence in the U.S. coming forward with a number, and that number making it through," either as cap-and-trade or as regulation, he said.

The United States, as the world's number two emitter after China, is key to a deal in Copenhagen to break deadlock between rich and poor nations about sharing out the burden of curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

Most emissions are created by burning fossil fuels.

China said the talks must deliver on climate cash to help poor nations adapt to climate change impacts and to green their economies and that the money must be new and substantial.

"This conference can't be like the ones of the past, with the developed countries handing out empty cheques that ultimately come to nothing," state news agency Xinhua quoted Xie Zhenhua, China's top climate negotiator, as saying.

Pressure is building on Copenhagen to deliver at least a political deal to curb emissions and agree on a "fast-start" climate fund from 2010 that the U.N. says should be at least $10 billion a year.

The troubled U.N. climate talks, launched two years ago, were meant to agree on a legally binding treaty at Copenhagen to expand or replace the existing Kyoto Protocol. But that looks to be out of reach for now.

The U.N. says any Copenhagen deal must contain ambitious emissions cuts by rich nations, financing pledges for poorer nations and steps by major developing countries to curb their greenhouse gas pollution.

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