De Boer Calls for Action as Climate Talks Bog Down Over Key Issues

As the Copenhagen climate summit entered its final four days with wide differences still separating major blocs of countries, the UN’s chief climate negotiator, Yvo de Boer, called on participants to begin making more concessions and step up the pace of the talks. Saying the conference has entered “a very distinct and important moment in the process,” de Boer warned, “We have, over the last week or so, seen progress in a number of areas, but we haven’t seen enough of it. There is still an enormous amount of ground to be covered if this conference is to deliver what people around the world expect it to deliver.” As some of the 110 world leaders expected for the last few days of the conference began arriving in Copenhagen, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon also called on rich and poor nations to make much more aggressive efforts to narrow differences that increasingly centered on three areas: the size of CO2 emissions cuts countries are willing to make, methods of verifying that the cuts are actually made, and the amount of money that industrialized nations are willing to contribute to a fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change and adopt renewable energy technologies. “This is a time where [negotiators] should exercise leadership,” Ban told the Associated Press. “And this is a time to stop pointing fingers, to start looking in the mirror and offering what they can do more, both the developed and developing countries.”
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