New climate treaty may have to wait
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 10:16PM COPENHAGEN | There's not enough time to strike a detailed and binding deal at next month's Copenhagen conference on climate change, but nations say it still can succeed if all 192 countries can agree on two sets of numbers.
Those numbers - how much money will be given to poor countries to adapt to global warming and how much industrial countries will reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next 10 years - are highly contentious, and there's no guarantee that even the scaled-back ambition for a political agreement can be reached.
Cabinet ministers and top negotiators from 40 key countries convened Monday for two days of closed-door meetings to prepare for the U.N. conference in the Danish capital, but were unlikely to try to set those specific numbers. That will remain for the summit next month.
But other crunch issues required discussion, officials said. Key among them was how financing - more than $100 billion a year within a decade - will be raised and delivered to countries in need. Also critical was how major emerging economies such as India and China can help fight climate change, and how their contributions can be embedded in an international accord.
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