Police Battles
Protesters At Climate Conference
Security
officials are trying to douse violent protests by several groups
at the climate conference as world leaders are expected to
arrive in the Danish capital of Copenhagen in the next three
days to agree on an accord to fight global warming.
There are however strong indications that there may be nothing
to sign.
Envoys from China, the U.S., the European Union and India, the
world’s top polluters, have bickered, quarreled and walked out
during talks among 193 nations, aimed at reaching an accord that
the United Nations framed as the most comprehensive deal to curb
global warming.
‘Any headway’?
“Countries and blocks of countries have come here with very
hard positions,” Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo said in an
interview in Copenhagen. “You need some seismic shifts to really
close a deal,” he added.
Connie Hedegaard, chairwoman of the meeting, stepped down on
Wednesday, allowing Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen
to take over.
She called the move “appropriate” with so many heads of state
arriving.
Officials had just announced efforts had failed to amend the
1997 Kyoto Protocol climate accord.
The angst in conference rooms has been reflected on the streets,
with protesters fighting riot police as Denmark mounted the
biggest security operation in its history.
More than half of
Denmark’s 10,500 police are providing security for the talks at
Copenhagen’s 15,000-capacity Bella Center.
Dubbed ‘Constipagen’
“We’re calling it Constipagen because the line’s not moving
and the talks are not moving,” said Jasmine Hyman, who works for
Gold Standard Foundation of Geneva that certifies carbon
offsets. She said it took her eight hours to get in.
Police have detained 200 protesters who were part of a
demonstration trying to enter the summit venue without
credentials.
Speakers will include Gordon Brown, the U.K. Prime Minister,
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s
president.
On Tuesday, Prince Charles, heir to the U.K. throne, former U.S.
Vice President Al Gore, who’s won an Oscar and a Nobel Peace
Prize for his efforts to publicize global warming and California
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke. U.S. President Barack
Obama arrives later in the week.
Kyoto Dispute
The discussions have often broken along rich-poor lines.
Developing nations have accused industrialized countries of
trying to kill off the Kyoto Protocol, the current
emissions-limiting treaty. Developed nations, including the U.S.
and Japan, want to replace Kyoto with another treaty.
The U.S., the largest industrialized emitter, never ratified the
Kyoto pact, which sets no binding emission targets for
developing nations, such as India and China.
The disputes in Copenhagen stem from the division of the UN
talks into two tracks: one to extend Kyoto’s binding emissions
targets beyond 2012 for all developed nations bar the U.S., and
another to establish what the world’s biggest economy and
developing nations will do to cut their emissions.
The 27-nation European Union, which is bound by Kyoto, has
called for the two negotiating tracks to be merged in favor of a
single legally binding treaty, a call rejected by poorer
nations. Other developed countries support a single deal.
Other issues dividing delegates include the size of emission
reductions by developed nations, verifying emission reductions
by developing countries and climate aid worth $100 billion a
year from rich to poor nations.
Yahoonews/Yinka
