Obama Reaches Tentative Deal On Climate Change

US, China, India, South Africa reach deal


A senior Obama administration official says the U.S., China, India and South Africa have reached a "meaningful agreement" on climate change.

The official characterized the deal as a first step, but said it was not enough to combat the threat of a warming planet.

Details of the deal with these emerging economies were not immediately clear.

The agreement was reached Friday at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen after a meeting among President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (MUHN'-moh-hahn sing) and South African President Jacob Zuma (ZOO'-muh).

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement had not yet been officially announced.

The agreement was with the smaller group of countries, but was being worked by Obama and various negotiating teams with a larger number of countries, the official said.



On the verge of a deal in Copehnagen


President Obama and world leaders are on the verge of finalizing a climate deal that caps the global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees — but punts major emissions decisions until 2012 — after a day of frantic leader-to-leader talks in Copenhagen.

"We're very close," said a person close the negotiations this evening, involving President Obama and leaders from China, Indian and Brazil.

Earlier Friday, a visibly angry Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet at China and other developing nations Friday, declaring that the time has come "not to talk but to act" on climate change.

Obama’s public ultimatum kicked off a furious round of bilateral negotiations between the world’s two largest pollution emitters as the conference entered its final hours, with Obama plunging into a pair of bargaining sessions involving Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who had earlier boycotted a larger, multi-nation meeting with Obama.

As night fell in the Danish capital, the talks dragged on, with Obama extending his visit to complete a deal even as a big snowstorm closed in on Washington D.C.

The outlines of a relatively vague “political” agreement seemed to be taking shape, according to three drafts of possible statements leaked to the press Friday. The latest draft contained a goal of capping global temperature increases to 1.5 percent – a tougher standard than the previous 2 percent threshold in earlier drafts.

Still, there was no hint of the emissions caps that were thought to be critical before the conference began two weeks ago.

On Friday morning, Obama warned delegates that U.S. offers of funding for poor nations would remain on the table “if and only if” developing nations, including China, agreed to international monitoring of their greenhouse gas emissions.

"I have to be honest, as the world watches us ... I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt and it hangs in the balance,” Obama told the COP-15 plenary session as hope faded for anything more than a vague political agreement.

“The time for talk is over, this is the bottom line: We can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward. We can do that, and everyone who is in this room will be part of an historic endeavor, or we can choose delay,” he said.

He added, “The question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart. … We know the fault lines because we’ve been imprisoned by them for years.”

Back home, senators critical to getting a climate bill through Congress have stressed that developing nations must submit to international monitoring — particularly if they want the U.S. to pay hundreds of billions to help combat the destructive impact of climate change.

"The only way we'll be successful in America is for countries like China and India to make an equivalent commitment," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is crafting a bipartisan climate bill. "We're not going to unilaterally disarm."

While Obama emphasized the U.S. commitment to taking action on climate change, he did not set a deadline for specific Senate action on the climate bill.

Former Vice President Al Gore and other environmental activists have pushed the Senate to pass legislation by April 22, the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, in hope of providing momentum to international talks next year.

The lack of specific domestic and international commitments in Obama's address indicated that an international agreement still hung in the balance — even as the talks moved into the final weekend.

Overnight reports that world leaders had agreed to a tentative final climate change deal in Copenhagen were greatly exaggerated — and the outcome of the COP-15 conference was still very much up in the air when Air Force One touched down at 9:01 a.m. local time.

“What’s on the table still has large gaps and unanswered questions," said David Waskow, climate change program director at Oxfam America. "The United States must get more specific to make a real deal possible.”

After addressing the delegates, Obama met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for close to an hour to discuss emissions goals, verification mechanisms and climate financing. The lack of agreement between China and the U.S. — the world's two largest greenhouse gas emitters — has been a major stumbling block in the talks.

A White house official described the discussion as “constructive” and said that the two leaders asked their negotiators to get together one-on-one after the meeting.

Obama had been expected to meet one-on-one with Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen immediately after landing in Copenhagen Friday morning, followed by an 11 a.m. speech to the conference's plenary session. But recognizing the urgency of the situation, he quickly cancelled those plans to sit in on a much larger session with Rasmussen, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, a Chinese representative, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and others.

"There are big problems, it is moving very slowly, and China and India are blocking," Sarkozy told the Danish daily Politiken after leaving the meeting, which broke up at 11:30 a.m.

Weary and frustrated negotiators described a process that still involved the nibbling of policy appetizers at a time when prior conferences were already on to the coffee and dessert of their valedictory speeches.

They warned that none of the several drafts circulating in Copenhagen represented even the bones of a final deal, with many key issues still in flux and time running out. Moreover, U.S. predictions that roadblocks could be thrown up by smaller countries seemed to be coming true, with last-minute objections voiced by Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, according to people familiar with talks.

"There are deep differences in opinion and views on how we should solve this. We'll try our best, until the last minutes of this conference," Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told reporters as overnight talks ended.

Negotiators from nearly 200 nations, working around the clock, did agree to a broad mandate to cap the global temperature increase from pre-industrial levels at two degrees Celsius. But there was no deal on emissions caps or specific carbon cuts, according to officials briefed on the talks.

One key sticking point: a demand by industrialized nations that the document produced here be legally binding, the so-called "operational" agreement Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about yesterday.

Developing countries, led by China, India and the African Union, still seemed unwilling to sign off on a final document, despite a new deal sweetener that could add as much as $30 billion to the $100 billion annual international fund for poor nations by 2020 outlined by Clinton on Thursday.

An official with a developing nation told Reuters that rich nations were offering to cut their carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, a proposal that had been rejected by developing nations. Developing nations have always insisted on the need for mid-term targets.

"The situation is desperate," a top Indian negotiator told the wire service. "There is no agreement on even what to call the text — a declaration, a statement or whatever. They (rich nations) want to make it a politically binding document, which we oppose."

And the U.S. was still wrestling with China and India over international monitoring of their emissions cuts, a sticking point that ground the entire conference to a halt early Thursday.

Danes monitored the progress of Obama's arrival obsessively, with cabbies craning at dashboard TV sets to monitor the approach of Air Force One from distant dot to Obama's arrival. He was accompanied by environment czar Carol Browner, aide Valerie Jarrett, press secretary Robert Gibbs and National Security Adviser Jim Jones.



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Sources: AP, Huffington Post, Politico, Google Maps