Photo by Christian Charisius for Reuters
This morning in Copenhagen, the climate talks stalled as African nations threatened to walk out on the conference. Upset that industrialized nations appeared to be killing the Kyoto Protocol, the African bloc cried out that industrialized nations were short-changing developing countries.
Since the beginning of the conference, the existence of two schools of thought regarding the Kyoto Protocol have emerged. The first is to maintain and alter it; the second to abandon it. The Kyoto Protocol placed strict standards for industrialized nations’ carbon emissions, but no cap for developing countries’ carbon emissions. The concern of the African nations it that industrialized countries have been trying to abandon the Kyoto Protocol tract before new standards to limit industrialized countries’ carbon emissions, which make up 85% of the world’s greenhouse gases, are in place.
However, by the afternoon, the African nations had re-joined the talks. During the same time, the US collaborated with other industrialized countries (Italy, Norway, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland) to give a total of $350 million over the next 5 years to developing countries to develop renewable and non-polluting methods. The plan, called the Renewables and Efficiency Deployment Initiative, offers four main components for developing countries: reducing the use of kerosene lamps, enhancing labeling of energy-efficient standards, a Web-based exchange to the deployment of clean energy technologies and financial support for the World Bank’s Strategic Climate Fund.
Via NYTimes and Guardian
