COPENHAGEN — A leaked Danish document at the U.N. climate conference provoked angry criticism Tuesday from developing countries that feared it would shift more of the burden to curb greenhouse gases on poorer countries.
The issue gained new impetus, meanwhile, when negotiators displayed charts of data that said the current decade is on track to be the hottest on record for Earth.
At the heart of the clash of ideas — stemming from draft texts attributed to Denmark and China — is the determination by the more impoverished states to bear a lesser burden than wealthy, more industrialized countries in the effort to slow global warming.
Diplomats from developing countries and climate activists also complained that the Danish hosts had pre-empted the negotiations with their draft proposal, prepared before the two- week conference began.
The proposal chips away at the wall between what developed and developing nations can be expected to do to reduce emissions.
A sketchy counterproposal attributed to China would extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrial nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming by an average of 5 percent by 2012, compared with 1990 levels.
The Chinese text would incorporate specific, new, deeper targets for the industrialized world for a further five to eight years. Developing countries, on the other hand, would be covered by a separate agreement that envisions their taking actions to control emissions but not in the same legally binding way. No targets would be specified for them.
Such draft ideas are usual grist early in such long, difficult international talks. These two proposals were not yet even recorded as official conference documents.
Earlier Tuesday, the U.N.’s weather agency boosted the sense of urgency surrounding the conference with data showing this decade is on track to be the hottest since records began in 1850, with 2009 the fifth-warmest year ever. The second-warmest decade was the 1990s.
Only the United States and Canada experienced cooler conditions than average, the World Meteorological Organization said, though Alaska had the second-warmest July on record.
