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诺贝尔和平奖得主、肯尼亚教授Wangari Maathai与联合国秘书长潘基文在联合国气候变化大会的第九天出席一个会议
周
二，联合国(United Nations)号召全球应对气候变化的努力似乎出现了倒退。对于如何分配限制碳排放责任的一些最基本问题，世界最重要的几个经济体还在你来我往地争吵。就在世界各国领导人开始抵达丹麦首都，参加为期两周的联合国气候变化大会的高潮环节时，美国、欧盟和以中国为首的发展中国家团体的谈判代表之间，出现了更大的分歧。
据熟悉情况的人士称，为了抢在周五的截止时间以前达成一项协议，数国首脑已经开始与其他国家首脑通话，这当中包括美国总统奥巴马(Barack Obama)，英国首相布朗(Gordon Brown)，联合国秘书长潘基文(Ban Ki-moon)和丹麦首相拉斯穆森(Lars Loekke Rasmussen)。
报道环境问题的记者杰弗里・鲍尔(Jeffrey Ball)在哥本哈根气候峰会现场发回报道说，此刻发达国家和新兴国家之间的分歧加深，气氛十分紧张。对于如何分配限制碳排放责任的细节问题上，争吵非常激烈。
周二流传的一份新的协议草案较早前拟议的框架出现了倒退：它没有任何减排和融资目标。新的草案只是说，上面的条款将参照周五发布的一份包含了一系列减排目标的草案而详细制定。
最新这份协议草案说，发达国家对全球多数温室气体排放量负有历史责任，所以必须通过降低其碳排放，并向相对贫穷的国家提供资金和技术，从而在应对气候变化的过程中起到带头作用。这是早前七十七国集团成员国表达抗议后，对发展中国家的一个妥协。七十七国集团包括各贫穷国家，也包括印度和巴西等大型新兴经济体，周一它们的代表一度从会谈中离场。
联合国气候变化支持小组负责人扎诺斯•帕兹托(Janos Pasztor)说，这不是一场气候变化谈判，而是关乎某种更基本的问题，是关于经济实力。他还说，各国其实就是得分出个高低。
十多年的气候外交积累起来的愤怒与怨恨已经公开化，显示出深刻的不信任感。
现有的气候变化条约《京都议定书》(Kyoto Protocol)要求，签署该条约的发达国家要在2012年以前将其排放量在1990年水平的基础上总体削减5%。但这个协定并不约束世界最大的两个温室气体排放国。这两个国家占了世界温室气体排放总量的40%，一个是中国，它是发展中国家，没有被要求削减排放量，另一个是美国，它没有签署条约。哥本哈根会议的目的是要拿出在世界范围内限制排放的办法。
在哥本哈根会议召开前，美国和中国分别宣布了解决温室气体排放的具体承诺。但由于美国坚持中国应接受具有法律约束力的协议（中国一直拒绝这点），以及在接受国际核查程度方面的分歧，双方陷入了僵局。
发展中国家认为，发达国家违背了过去应对气候变化的承诺。中国更是指出，美国没有履行根据《联合国气候变化框架公约》(U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change)达成的协议，阻止美国排放量的增长和为发展中国家提供资金遏制其温室气体的排放。美国是1992年公约的签字国，不过美国没有批准在框架公约之外达成的《京都议定书》(Kyoto Protocol)。
哥本哈根会谈中方代表团团长解振华说，发达国家在帮助发展中国家的问题上只开空头支票，但却不愿采取任何实际行动。
因此，中国官员近日来认为，现在不应指望中国承诺具有法律约束力的具体减排目标。此外，中国说，如果它按照上月宣布的目标使用自有资金进行减排，它就不必就是否达到了这些目标接受国际核查。中国认为，根据框架公约，它不必接受此类核查。
美国表示，它已履行了框架公约下的承诺。目前的问题是一个看起来难以理解，但对气候谈判具有重要象征意义的细节：即美国改变了衡量其减排承诺的年份。它将“基准年”从1990年到改到了2005年，实际上相当于在减排问题上给自己定下了更高的排放上限。
美国首席气候谈判代表斯特恩(Todd Stern)承认美国做出了这个改变，但他说这点无关紧要，在技术上并未违反框架公约。
他说，只是在全球气候谈判这种完全封闭的情况下，按1990年而不是2005年衡量排放的削减才被视为神圣不可侵犯的准则。现实情况是，我们不是《京都议定书》的缔约国，框架公约中有1990年的基线。但它只是不具约束力的一种期望。
欧洲领导人担心，美国和中国会彼此指责对方没有提出有足够积极的方案，从而难以在削减排放和向贫穷国家提供大笔资金方面达成具有约束力的协议。
据了解欧洲立场的知情人士说，欧洲领导人正在努力推动谈判代表将重点放在少数核心问题上，包括中国和印度将如何致力于削减温室气体排放、发达国家将提供多少资金和美国将同意做些什么。
斯特恩说，包括奥巴马总统在内的世界领导人定于周五举行会议，这将加大谈判代表达到某种协议的压力。
斯特恩说，将有领导人与会的各国代表都迫切希望事情能尽可能地向好的一面发展。所以我认为这会带来压力，但这可能是一种有益的压力。
Jeffrey Ball / Stephen Power
（更新完成）
The United Nations' effort to muster global action against climate change appeared to move backward Tuesday, as the world's leading economies traded barbs over the most basic questions about how to divide responsibility for curbing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Even as world leaders began arriving for the climax of the two-week U.N. climate conference in the Danish capital, disagreements deepened among negotiators for the U.S., the European Union and a bloc of developing nations led by China.
In an attempt to salvage a deal by the Friday deadline, several heads of state, including U.S. President Barack Obama, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen have begun calling their counterparts in various countries, according to people familiar with the calls.
The disagreements cover elemental issues: the size of emission reductions that individual countries should take on, the amount of money rich countries should pay poor countries to help fund a cleanup, and the extent of monitoring that countries should have to accept so other nations can verify they actually are implementing whatever environmental steps they promise to take.
A new draft agreement circulated Tuesday moved backward from an earlier proposed framework--lacking any targets for carbon cuts and financing. The new draft said only the provisions were 'to be elaborated' with reference to a draft issued Friday that contained a range of emissions targets.
The latest draft agreement said developed countries were historically responsible for most global emissions of greenhouse gases and so 'must take the lead in combating climate change' by abating their carbon emissions and providing money and technology to poorer nations. That was a bow to developing nations, following a protest Monday by members of the Group of 77, which includes poor countries as well as large emerging economies like India and Brazil, whose representatives briefly walked out of the talks.
'This is not a climate-change negotiation,' said Janos Pasztor, director of the U.N. secretary-general's climate-change support team. 'It's about something much more fundamental. It's about economic strength.' Countries, he added, 'just have to slug it out.'
Anger and resentment that have been building over more than a decade of climate diplomacy have spilled into the open, revealing deep distrust.
An existing climate-change treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, requires developed countries that ratified it to cut their emissions by a collective 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. But that accord doesn't curb greenhouse gases from the world's two biggest emitters, which together account for 40% of greenhouse-gas emissions. China, as a developing country, isn't required to cut its emissions, and the U.S. didn't ratify the treaty. The purpose of the Copenhagen conference was to come up with some way to rein in emissions world-wide.
The U.S. and China each announced specific pledges to address greenhouse-gas emissions before the Copenhagen conference started. But the two have been locked in a standoff over the U.S.'s insistence that China commit to a legally binding agreement--a step China has resisted--and the degree to which China's actions should be open to international review.
Developing countries argue that wealthy nations have reneged on past pledges to address climate change. In particular, China says the U.S. has failed to honor its agreement under a broad document called the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to stop U.S. emissions growth and to provide money for developing countries to curb their own greenhouse-gas output. The U.S. was a party to the 1992 accord, even though the U.S. didn't ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which grew out of the framework.
Wealthy countries have 'only put down beautiful words about helping developing nations,' but they are 'not willing to take any real action,' said Xie Zhenhua, the head of China's delegation at the talks.
As a result, Chinese officials have argued in recent days that China shouldn't now be expected to commit legally to a specific emission-reduction target. Moreover, China says that if it uses its own money for emission-reducing moves--as it plans to do under the targets it announced last month--it shouldn't have to submit to international verification of whether it is meeting those targets. China argues that the framework convention protects it from such verification.
The U.S. says it has lived up to its commitments under the framework convention. At issue is a seemingly arcane detail that has taken on great symbolic importance in the climate talks: the fact that the U.S. changed the year against which it measured its emission-reduction pledges. It moved that 'baseline' year to 2005 from 1990, in effect giving itself a higher emissions ceiling from which to reduce.
Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate negotiator, agreed the U.S. made that change, but he said it wasn't important and wasn't technically a violation of the framework convention.
'It's only in the hermetically sealed world of global climate-change negotiations that measuring your reduction from' 1990 instead of 2005 'would be treated as sacrosanct,' he said. 'The reality is we didn't become part of Kyoto, and the framework convention has a 1990 baseline. But it was in a nonbinding, aspirational context.'
European leaders are concerned that the U.S. and China will try to opt out of any binding deal to cut emissions and contribute significant funds to poor countries by blaming each other's failure to offer ambitious proposals.
European leaders are trying to push negotiators to focus on a short list of core issues, including what China and India will commit to do to cut emissions, how much money wealthy nations will provide and what the U.S. will agree to do, according to officials familiar with the European stance in the talks.
Stern said Friday's scheduled gathering of world leaders, including President Obama, will increase pressure on negotiators to reach some sort of agreement.
'Everybody who's got their boss coming is particularly keen to have things in as good a shape as possible. So I think it's putting pressure, but I think probably pressure of a salutary kind,' Stern said.
Jeffrey Ball / Stephen Power
Even as world leaders began arriving for the climax of the two-week U.N. climate conference in the Danish capital, disagreements deepened among negotiators for the U.S., the European Union and a bloc of developing nations led by China.
In an attempt to salvage a deal by the Friday deadline, several heads of state, including U.S. President Barack Obama, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen have begun calling their counterparts in various countries, according to people familiar with the calls.
The disagreements cover elemental issues: the size of emission reductions that individual countries should take on, the amount of money rich countries should pay poor countries to help fund a cleanup, and the extent of monitoring that countries should have to accept so other nations can verify they actually are implementing whatever environmental steps they promise to take.
A new draft agreement circulated Tuesday moved backward from an earlier proposed framework--lacking any targets for carbon cuts and financing. The new draft said only the provisions were 'to be elaborated' with reference to a draft issued Friday that contained a range of emissions targets.
The latest draft agreement said developed countries were historically responsible for most global emissions of greenhouse gases and so 'must take the lead in combating climate change' by abating their carbon emissions and providing money and technology to poorer nations. That was a bow to developing nations, following a protest Monday by members of the Group of 77, which includes poor countries as well as large emerging economies like India and Brazil, whose representatives briefly walked out of the talks.
'This is not a climate-change negotiation,' said Janos Pasztor, director of the U.N. secretary-general's climate-change support team. 'It's about something much more fundamental. It's about economic strength.' Countries, he added, 'just have to slug it out.'
Anger and resentment that have been building over more than a decade of climate diplomacy have spilled into the open, revealing deep distrust.
An existing climate-change treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, requires developed countries that ratified it to cut their emissions by a collective 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. But that accord doesn't curb greenhouse gases from the world's two biggest emitters, which together account for 40% of greenhouse-gas emissions. China, as a developing country, isn't required to cut its emissions, and the U.S. didn't ratify the treaty. The purpose of the Copenhagen conference was to come up with some way to rein in emissions world-wide.
The U.S. and China each announced specific pledges to address greenhouse-gas emissions before the Copenhagen conference started. But the two have been locked in a standoff over the U.S.'s insistence that China commit to a legally binding agreement--a step China has resisted--and the degree to which China's actions should be open to international review.
Developing countries argue that wealthy nations have reneged on past pledges to address climate change. In particular, China says the U.S. has failed to honor its agreement under a broad document called the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to stop U.S. emissions growth and to provide money for developing countries to curb their own greenhouse-gas output. The U.S. was a party to the 1992 accord, even though the U.S. didn't ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which grew out of the framework.
Wealthy countries have 'only put down beautiful words about helping developing nations,' but they are 'not willing to take any real action,' said Xie Zhenhua, the head of China's delegation at the talks.
As a result, Chinese officials have argued in recent days that China shouldn't now be expected to commit legally to a specific emission-reduction target. Moreover, China says that if it uses its own money for emission-reducing moves--as it plans to do under the targets it announced last month--it shouldn't have to submit to international verification of whether it is meeting those targets. China argues that the framework convention protects it from such verification.
The U.S. says it has lived up to its commitments under the framework convention. At issue is a seemingly arcane detail that has taken on great symbolic importance in the climate talks: the fact that the U.S. changed the year against which it measured its emission-reduction pledges. It moved that 'baseline' year to 2005 from 1990, in effect giving itself a higher emissions ceiling from which to reduce.
Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate negotiator, agreed the U.S. made that change, but he said it wasn't important and wasn't technically a violation of the framework convention.
'It's only in the hermetically sealed world of global climate-change negotiations that measuring your reduction from' 1990 instead of 2005 'would be treated as sacrosanct,' he said. 'The reality is we didn't become part of Kyoto, and the framework convention has a 1990 baseline. But it was in a nonbinding, aspirational context.'
European leaders are concerned that the U.S. and China will try to opt out of any binding deal to cut emissions and contribute significant funds to poor countries by blaming each other's failure to offer ambitious proposals.
European leaders are trying to push negotiators to focus on a short list of core issues, including what China and India will commit to do to cut emissions, how much money wealthy nations will provide and what the U.S. will agree to do, according to officials familiar with the European stance in the talks.
Stern said Friday's scheduled gathering of world leaders, including President Obama, will increase pressure on negotiators to reach some sort of agreement.
'Everybody who's got their boss coming is particularly keen to have things in as good a shape as possible. So I think it's putting pressure, but I think probably pressure of a salutary kind,' Stern said.
Jeffrey Ball / Stephen Power
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