WASHINGTON — Sen. John Kerry, who leaves today for international climate talks in Poznan, Poland, says that the outgoing Bush administration and the economic crisis facing the country should not impede progress toward negotiating a new international global warming agreement in Copenhagen, Denmark, next year.
“We need to keep it on track, we need to make sure that the slow pace of the (Bush) administration doesn’t downgrade people’s sense of possibility,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview in his office Monday as he prepared to join a congressional delegation at the Poznan talks today.
World leaders are gathering in Poznan this week to create a successor treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which dozens of nations, but not the United States, agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace, said the discussions had gotten off to a slow start and that he hoped Kerry’s arrival would send “a strong signal that U.S. senior leadership stands ready to help the world tackle global warming.”
