Obama to attend Copenhagen, U.N. happy

BONN, Germany, Nov. 25 (UPI) -- The top U.N. climate official welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to attend the climate summit next month in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Obama's decision to travel to Copenhagen on Dec. 9 before heading to nearby Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize was critical to a good outcome of the summit, Yvo de Boer, the United Nations' top climate negotiator, said Wednesday in the western German city of Bonn.

"I think it's critical that President Obama attend the climate-change summit in Copenhagen," he said.

He added that U.S. negotiators needed to bring to the Dec. 8-17 meeting a clear commitment on climate protection until 2020.

"We need an indication from the United States on what it can do in numerical terms to reduce its emissions," he said.

All industrialized countries have put forward concrete emissions reductions -- except the United States. "This is the first thing we need, and this is critical."

The EU has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels. Japan has said it is willing to cut emissions by 25 percent.

Washington earlier this week indicated that it might be willing to bring binding emissions reductions targets to Copenhagen.

The problem, however, is that a corresponding climate production bill is stalling in the U.S. Senate and won't be decided upon until early 2010. Moreover, the U.S. bill would reduce emissions by 17 percent to 20 percent by 2020, but only compared with 2005 levels. Taking the benchmark 1990 year would signify reductions of only 4 percent, experts say.

Leading developing nations including India and China understandably say that this is not ambitious enough.

Observers don't expect for Copenhagen to produce a fully binding treaty; but de Boer said he was optimistic that the summit would produce a list of political targets for 2020 of all industrialized countries. Those targets could then be confirmed by a treaty agreed at one of the later climate-change summits.

"I don't think any country would back away from their target in the course of a negotiating process to a treaty," he added.

Copenhagen is expected to also prolong until 2020 the Kyoto Protocol, which will run out in 2012. The Copenhagen conference was due to produce a treaty to replace Kyoto, but it now seems that such an ending is out of reach.

Overall, current emissions reductions pledges are insufficient to keep the temperature increase below 2 degrees C, experts say. A warming climate will lead to rising sea levels as well as severe droughts and floods.