"Everybody Knows But Nobody's Signing Up" - Little To No Progress At Climate Talks - AFP

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A fresh round of talks on forging a new agreement to tackle climate change headed for a close on Friday after amassing hundreds of proposals but little sign of consensus emerging. With just six months left to conclude the pact under a deadline set in 2007, delegates said they saw little common ground at the talks in the German city of Bonn, held under the 192-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The deal, to be hammered out in Copenhagen in December, is supposed to take effect from 2012, when the current pledges of the Kyoto Protocol run out. The big issues are who should pledge to cut their emissions of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases and when, and how to channel money and technology to poor countries to cope with climate change and switch to low-carbon energy.

Compared with previous sessions, "the attitudes have been more constructive but the level of ambition is lower," France's climate ambassador, Brice Lalonde told AFP.

"Everybody knows that global emissions have to be halved by 2050 (compared with 1990 levels), which implies that industrialised countries reduce theirs by 80 percent. And everyone knows that emissions by developing countries have to start falling by 2025 at the latest," he said. "But nobody's signing up."

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/090612095307.f94r7pb2.html