COPENHAGEN — The United States’ announcement on the possible regulation of greenhouse gases came as a welcome boost Monday to a pivotal climate conference. Delegates opened the meeting of 192 nations with emotional appeals to leaders in Washington and elsewhere to take stronger action.
The conference climax will come when President Barack Obama and more than 100 other national leaders arrive for the final hours of talks next week. In preparation, Obama met with former Vice President Al Gore, a leading climate campaigner, at the White House on Monday.
Earlier in the day, the European Union had called for a stronger “bid” by the Americans, who thus far have provisionally pledged emissions cuts much less ambitious than Europe’s.
The endgame in Copenhagen “will mostly be on what will be delivered by the United States and China,” the world’s two biggest greenhouse-gas emitters, EU environment spokesman Andreas Carlgren told reporters.
“The clock has ticked down to zero. After two years of negotiations, the time has come to deliver,” Yvo de Boer, the U.N. climate chief, said as he opened the conference in the chilly and foggy Danish capital.
The conference president, Denmark’s Connie Hedegaard, called it a last, best chance.
“Political will has never been stronger,” she told delegates assembled in the Bella Center’s cavernous plenary hall. “And let me warn you: Political will will never be stronger. This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one. If ever.”
Some 15,000 delegates, environmentalists, business lobbyists, journalists and others are gathered in the huge convention center for the pivotal talks, along with thousands more outside, planning protests, street theater and scholarly discussions. The colorful global show contends that the future of the Earth’s climate is the future of everyone, from Eskimos and Midwest farmers to oil sheiks and African peasants.
The focus in Copenhagen has fallen on individual countries’ pledges of emission reductions, to be incorporated in some final agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose modest emission cuts for 37 nations expire in 2012.
