US to return centre stage on climate change, Kerry tells UN talks (AFP)

POZNAN, Poland (AFP) — The United States next year will spring back into the world arena for tackling climate change, where it will lead by example by setting caps on its carbon emissions, Senator John Kerry said at UN talks Thursday.

Kerry -- asked to report back to President-elect Barack Obama on the UN negotiations in Poznan -- enumerated Obama pledges to reverse policies that have left the United States sidelined for years on global warming.

"The United States under President Obama's leadership is determined to rejoin the world community in its efforts to deal with this issue," Kerry told reporters.

"It is determined to lead in that effort, and it will lead not just rhetorically but by example in the policies that we adopt at home."

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Less than a year is left for the pact to be concluded, in the Danish capital of Copenhagen in December 2009, and Kerry spoke out forcefully for this deadline to be met.

"We believe it is vital to keep the Copenhagen date on target and that talk of not meeting it, or of somehow not being able to, is entirely premature and inappropriate," Kerry said.

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But Kerry warned no treaty would be ratified by the US Senate, where he chairs the foreign relations committee, if big emerging economies failed to make commitments of their own.

He did not say what these should be, but said the effort should be in proportion to their abilities.

"We will not pass a treaty unless it is a global solution," said Kerry.

Optimism fading for Poland climate talks
By Eoin O'Carroll | 12.11.08

Hopes of laying a solid foundation for a post-Kyoto climate pact in 2009 are diminishing, as representatives from 189 nations gathered in Poznań, Poland, squabble over financing methods.

Delegates met for the two-week COP14 talks held in the western Polish industrial city hope to set the stage for a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocols, which expire in 2012. The details of the new climate pact are set to be agreed upon in December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

But the current talks, which close Friday, are proceeding more slowly than expected, casting into doubt hopes of a comprehensive climate treaty next year: “We’re working under a very tight timeline,” said UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, according to Bloomberg’s Alex Morales. “I don’t think where we are now it is going to be feasible to develop a fully elaborated, long-term response to climate change in Copenhagen.”

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Also hampering progress on the talks is the US’s current political limbo. America is officially being represented by the soon-to-be-departed Bush administration, which has consistently rejected mandatory emissions caps. President-elect Barack Obama is not attending, despite pleas from environmentalists that he do so, although senators John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar (D) of Minnesota – both early Obama supporters – are part of the US delegation.

The presidential transition period has slowed the talks, some observers say. The International Herald Tribune quotes one environmentalist who says that delegates are holding out: