Morten Andersen 02/07/2009 16:50
“Copenhagen is faltering at the moment. The Americans are now fully engaged. But several countries are blocking the progress,” Sir David King, former British Chief Scientific Advisor, said at the World Conference of Science Journalists in London.
He also noted that both Canada and Japan have recently gotten rid of their scientific advisors, and both countries “are stepping into the breach and blocking progress.”
A weak agreement coming out of the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen this December would be worse than no agreement, said Sir David King. According to Times Online he sees an ambitious bilateral agreement between China and the United States as a better alternative:
“If you had the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and (Barack) Obama on the same stage, together with the EU position, this would be a strong move in the right direction.”
According to One World Net, the former British advisor has “a lawyer in his team working behind the scenes to find a legal formula that would enable the summit (the UN conference, editor’s remark) to be concluded with a general statement and a commitment that a protocol would follow in 2010.”
In his speech, Sir David King praised a Brazilian commitment to stop deforestation in 2025 and was optimistic about reaching an international agreement on forest conservation at this years UN conference.
Comments by a reader
Peter Wood
03/07/2009 04:13 If Canada and Japan don't cooperate, we can have a treaty without them. Countries can then charge border taxes on fossil fuel intensive goods, and border export taxes on fossil fuels exported to these countries. Probably not a good outcome for Japan's steel industry or Canada's tar sands industry, but a good outcome for the planet
