Barack Obama’s climate deal unravels at last moment

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

The United Nations climate change conference ended in recrimination yesterday without reaching a clear deal on emissions targets.
After a stormy session in Copenhagen, in which a vociferous anti-American minority brought the talks close to collapse, most countries agreed simply to “take note” of a watered-down agreement brokered by President Barack Obama and supported by Britain.
This accord — which had been drawn up in discussions with China and 30 or so other countries on Friday — sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum of 2C above pre-industrial times.
Above this temperature, scientists say, the world would start to experience dangerous changes, including floods, droughts and rising seas.

Critics pointed out, however, that the agreement failed to say how this limit on rising temperatures would be achieved. It pushed into the future decisions on core problems such as emissions cuts, and did not specify where a proposed $100 billion (£62 billion) in annual aid for developing nations would come from.
Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN climate change secretariat, called it “basically a letter of intent ... the ingredients of an architecture that can respond to the long-term challenge of climate change”.
Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, dismissed it as “a triumph of spin over substance. It recognises the need to keep warming below 2C but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the big decisions on emissions cuts and fudges the issue of climate cash”.
The deal was denounced when put early yesterday to a plenary session of the conference after Obama and other heads of state had flown home.
Delegates from Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia — who form an anti-American front — led the attack.
A Sudanese delegate, Lumumba Di-Aping, caused uproar when he compared the plan with the Holocaust. It was, he said, “a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that piled 6m people into furnaces in Europe”.
“The reference to the Holocaust is ... absolutely despicable,” said Anders Turesson, Sweden’s chief negotiator.