INTERVIEW-Next Kyoto climate goals may be longer-UN expert
Source: Reuters
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent NAIROBI, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Some nations favour targets of up to 10 years for deeper cuts in greenhouse gases beyond 2012 to give industry longer-term certainty, the head of a key committee at U.N. climate talks said on Thursday. Environmentalists, however, favour sticking with five-year periods in any extension of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for fighting global warming, saying politicians will not keep promises made years ago by another government. "Many people including myself have felt five years was too short for a first commitment period (under Kyoto)," said Michael Zammit Cutajar, who heads a committee of 165 nations seeking ways to extend Kyoto beyond 2012. "Industry needs certainty over a longer period," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a U.N. Nov 6-17 climate meeting in Nairobi. Until now, he said, the view has been "that politics requires short timeframes since politicians don't have long lives or long memories". Kyoto obliges 35 industrialised states to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, to 5 percent below 1990 levels on average in the five-year period 2008-12. Zammit Cutajar, from Malta, said "quite a few nations" had urged consideration of longer periods, of up to 8-10 years. COAL, OIL A company planning to build a power plant fuelled by coal, oil or natural gas, for instance, needs to know whether it will be feasible to install expensive technology to cut greenhouse gases. Zammit Cutajar said the Nairobi meeting had not considered the length of any new scheme, which will be negotiated in coming years. "Fixing the duration is the last step of the work plan," he said. No country had suggested a period shorter than five years. "A longer period perhaps could be better," said European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas when asked how long he favoured. "Longer periods are needed for investors." The European Union, a main backer of Kyoto, wants to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 15-30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert many scientists' forecasts of more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels. But Steve Sawyer, at Greenpeace environmental group, said longer periods would be "a mistake of titanic proportions". "The lifetime policy view of governments does not extend very far beyond their electoral period. Ten years ... is a prescription for dithering and delay," he said. One diplomat said, however, that a shorter period of 2-3 years might be the best way to attract the United States. President George W. Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying it was a threat to U.S. jobs and wrongly left out developing nations. Bush will step down in Jan. 2009, giving little time for a new president to sign up for an extension of Kyoto, even if he or she wanted to. "A long period might end up shutting the United States out for another decade," the diplomat said.
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