Nations urged to agree new formula for cutting greenhouse gases

The Times
November 29, 2008
Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter


Attempts to force countries to reduce their carbon emissions per head of population are to be put forward next week at a United Nations climate change conference.
The plan, which is being drawn up by Brazil, is designed to put pressure on other nations to agree how targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions should be shared. The revised per capita scheme is thought to go some way towards easing resentment in developing nations that they are being asked to take on an unfair burden on climate change.
Instead of concentrating on a nation's overall carbon dioxide emissions, which would lead to many emerging economies being penalised as stiffly as wealthy countries, targets would be measured per capita.
Setting targets according to the average emissions of CO2, the chief greenhouse gas, attributable to each person is an approach endorsed by Britain and Germany.

It would mean developing countries such as China, which pumps as much CO2 into the atmosphere as America, facing less onerous reduction targets because each person is responsible for a fifth of the emissions of the average US citizen.
Brazil's proposals will be presented to the 14th conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Poznan, Poland, which starts on Monday. Among the more prominent participants will be Al Gore, who won a Nobel prize for his climate change campaigning, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, who has led measures against global warming in his state.
The chances of the proposals being agreed at Poznan are negligible, but the response to them will help delegates to gauge what needs to be done to ensure that an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can be reached in December next year at the conference in Copenhagen. That meeting has been set as the deadline for worldwide agreement on how to tackle climate change in order to give time for the measures to be put in place by the end of 2012 when the terms of the Kyoto agreement expire.