Rich Nations Must Pledge Firm CO2 Cuts by 2020, U.N. Official Says

The U.N.’s top climate official warned that efforts to forge a new global climate agreement next year will fail unless the U.S. and other wealthy nations commit themselves to specific targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Speaking at U.N. climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said, “We have to have numbers on the table from industrialized countries otherwise the dominoes won’t fall.” The Poznan meeting, attended by 11,000 delegates, is one of several leading up to a climate summit late next year in Copenhagen that is designed to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocols. De Boer told a news conference that China, India, and other developing countries will not agree to begin reducing their rapidly growing greenhouse gas emissions unless industrialized nations take the lead. President-elect Barack Obama, reversing Bush administration policy, has vowed to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.