Optimists, including Hilary Benn, Britain’s environment secretary, hailed the agreement as “historic” yesterday, mainly because America had signed up to it.
Others, however, fear that it will prove too weak to achieve anything. As the exhausted delegates and politicians board their planes to travel home today, are the real prospects of controlling global warming any better than before the Bali talks began? THE precedents are not good.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3056722.ece
Bali deal leaves greens in despair
AS more than 180 countries agreed a deal on climate change at the UN summit in Bali, environmentalists punctured the mood of self-congratulation by pointing to the failure to agree firm targets for reducing emissions.
Although the main industrialised countries, including America, agreed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, they refused to agree to an European Union proposal for a target of 25%-40% cuts by 2020.
Campaigners claimed the world’s biggest carbon emitters, including America, Japan and Canada, will now be free to carry on expanding such emissions for many more years to come.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3056767.ece
