Climate talks begin in Copenhagen

COPENHAGEN | Delegates to a pivotal climate conference welcomed an Obama administration move Monday to regulate greenhouse gases under existing clean air law, but said they still expect more.

The announcement came as the two-week meeting of 192 nations opened with emotional appeals from those countries endangered by rising seas and other damage from climate change.

The finding by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would supplement the cap on carbon dioxide emissions being considered in the U.S. Congress, effectively raising the U.S. offer on emissions reductions in two weeks of hard bargaining in Copenhagen.

“The executive branch is showing what it can do, even while legislation is pending,” Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. scientific network on climate change, said of the EPA action. “It also sends a powerful signal to Congress. It shows a degree of resolve on the part of the president.”

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, European Union environment spokesman Andreas Carlgren told reporters. He said he would be astonished if Obama did not put more on the table.

Whether the prospect of EPA action will satisfy such demands — and what China may now add to its earlier offer — remains to be seen. And success in the long-running climate talks hinges on more than emissions reductions. Most important, it requires commitments of financial support by rich countries for poor as they cope with the impacts of a changing global climate.

“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 chill 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 demonstrates that the future of the Earth’s climate is the future of everyone, from Eskimos and Midwest farmers, to oil sheiks and African peasants.

As climate talks have dragged on for two decades, the planet has continued to warm, something scientists blame largely on carbon dioxide and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuel and other industrial, transport and agricultural sources. On Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization is expected to announce that 2009 ranks as one of the warmest years on record, and this decade as the warmest.

Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, defended climate research in the face of a controversy over e-mails pilfered from a British university, which global warming skeptics say show scientists have been conspiring to hide evidence that doesn’t fit their theories.

“The recent incident of stealing the e-mails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC,” he told the conference.

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