The top climate lieutenant to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that a major — though perhaps preliminary — international agreement to curb global warming is still possible in Copenhagen. One leading option is to set low targets for emissions reductions initially and to boost them if global warming gets worse.
Janos Pasztor, director of the climate change support team under Ban, told reporters that the Copenhagen global warming conference could yield a breakthrough on greenhouse gas reduction targets and financial aid to poor countries. A binding agreement would be written in 2010, he said….
Ban visited Washington last week to meet with Obama officials and with senators, and said he was optimistic about the chances for a bill to pass the Senate sometime next year. Two of the three senators working to build a bipartisan coalition for the legislation — John Kerry, D-Mass. and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. — said after the meeting they would try to release an outline of their proposal before the Copenhagen conference.
That’s the news today from The Washington Times Washington Insight/Energy (sub. req’d).
It is no surprise to CP readers that “administration officials have stressed that it will not agree to a global treaty that cannot win approval in the Senate.” For a related story, see the WashPost’s “U.S. weighs backing interim international climate agreement.” And this is similar to the “Statement by Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen at the GLOBE Copenhagen Legislators Forum on 24 October 2009,” which I’ll excerpt below.
First, more from the Insight story:












When we last left GM, they were pursuing buyers for Hummer and Saturn (see “
RSS
Subscribe by Email
Follow Climate Progress on Twitter
