President Barack Obama has been trying to build momentum for a new climate pact to succeed the Kyoto accord that required mandatory cuts in atmospheric warming gases but expires at the end of 2012. His administration has announced a target of returning to 1990 levels of greenhouse emissions by 2020.
"If we miss this opportunity, there will be no second chance sometime in the future, no later way to undo the catastrophic damage to the environment we will cause," he wrote in an article Newsweek.
SHOOT: I saw the movie EARTH today. They're saying once we pass 2015, if the problems we have today tip over then, it's over. This worldwide recession, might help slow things down. And perhaps our energy woes have come just in time. But everyone needs to get involved now in participating in the healing and sustaining of our common home.
UNITED NATIONS – As the United States lags on climate legislation, China is poised to join the European Union in claiming "front-runner" status among nations battling climate change, the U.N. climate chief said Monday.
Yvo de Boer said in an Associated Press interview that China is leaping ahead of the United States with domestic plans for more energy efficiency, renewable sources of power, cuts in vehicle pollution and closures of dirty plants.
"China and India have announced very ambitious national climate change plans. In the case of China, so ambitious that it could well become the front-runner in the fight to address climate change," de Boer said. "The big question mark is the U.S."
China and the U.S. together account for about 40 percent of all the world's emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other industrial warming gases.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in article published Monday that "the negotiations are proceeding so slowly that a deal is in grave danger."
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