Copenhagen: Climate summit fails to deliver

Published on Saturday 19 December 2009 19:18

THE Copenhagen climate change summit was widely dismissed as a failure last night after failing to commit to a legally-binding plan to cut carbon emissions to fight global warming.

&#149 German Chancellor Angela Merkel, flanked by EC president Jos Barroso, left, and Sweden's president Fredrik Reinfeldt, right, negotiates with Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama.

A last-minute deal agreed by the United States and other key nations including China and Brazil late on Friday simply "recognised" the need to limit warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels and stopped short of any mandatory reductions in pollution.

It was further weakened when the 193 nations gathered for the summit's last day merely "noted" the deal, without formally adopting its principles.

The UN acknowledged that, according to most climate models, the deal would fail to prevent temperatures rising beyond "dangerous" levels.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon insisted that there would now need to be a legally-binding agreement on cuts next year if Copenhagen's original aims were to be achieved.

Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said the agreement was "disappointing", although he claimed it was a "first step" towards a global deal. In Scotland, First Minister Alex Salmond said the deal was "a tiptoe forward, when what the world required was a giant leap".

Recriminations started last night over how two years of negotiations had come down to a rushed agreement resolved in the last few hours before the conference was broken up.

More on the summit:Copenhagen's sound and fury signifies little in climate battle

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Copenhagen: The deal they struck