There’s plenty of sturm und drang coming from COP 15. The “FT” reports this morning that the African states first walked out then returned, having claimed “…that they had won some concessions.”
The “Financial Times” front page this morning declared China signals climate funds shift. Apparently, the PRC “… abandoned its demand for funding from the developed world to combat climate change…” The lead American negotiator, Todd Stern, had put the idea of US support for substantially underwriting China’s mitigation efforts to rest last week. In this “NY Times” article, he’s quoted: “We absolutely recognize our historic role in putting emissions in the atmosphere up there that are there now, but the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations, I just categorically reject that.” I guess the Chinese heard that.
The EU, however, made a critical announcement last week: they will be making a substantial contribution to “fast-start funding” for developing nations. Here is what the Swedish Presidency of the European Union had to say about the agreement: The EU wants to work for an annual global contribution of EUR 7 billion per year between 2010 and 2012. Of this, the EU leaders have agreed to contribute EUR 2.4 billion annually. Here are Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt and EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso to flesh it out.
US Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a major effort to deploy clean tech in developing nations. The “Washington Post” reports on this here. The Renewables and Efficiency Deployment Initiative (Climate REDI) will support, as one important example, affordable solar home systems and LED lanterns. (I’ve written about the importance of getting to a better way of cooking and providing heat and light in developing nations a number of times, not least because of the incredible health impacts of burning biomass.) There’s more on this from DOE here.
The next few days will tell an important story. Let’s continue to bet that the conference will close on Friday with world leaders announcing a solid package going forward.
