After 10 Days, Bonn Climate Talks Floundering Like Mastodon In Tar Pit - Hardly Anything Agreed To
BONN, Germany – A long round of UN climate talks closes in Bonn Thursday, June 11, with negotiators grappling for a way out of a textual bog. Exactly 6 months are left before 195 countries are meant to forge a post-2020 accord in Paris to lift the shadow of climate change threatening future generations.
But after 10 days, negotiations in Bonn barely advanced in clearing a draft text of a thicket of problems. The text is now just "5 to 10% shorter" than at the start of the round when it numbered nearly 90 pages, said observer Romain Benicchio of campaign group Oxfam. None of the many issues bedeviling the complex process have been agreed, he said.
The draft coalesces around the goal of limiting global warming to 2ºC (3.6ºF) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels. That is a figure scientists say offers a good chance of avoiding catastrophic damage to Earth's climate system involving a future darkened by drought, flood, storms and rising seas.
The accord will be enacted by voluntary national pledges to curb greenhouse gases – the emissions, mainly from fossil fuels, that are driving the warming phenomenon. Beyond that, though, wide and politically explosive differences remain.
EDIT
http://www.rappler.com/world/global-affairs/96027-bonn-climate-talks-draft-text-issues
= new reply since forum marked as read
