Many support $100 billion a year on climate change

UNITED NATIONS — Many world leaders have expressed support for a proposal that would earmark $100 billion a year for the next decade for concrete actions to curb greenhouse gases and help countries cope with the impact of climate change, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.

Ban said he had sent letters to leaders of the 20 leading economies initially proposing $250 billion annually.

But after talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Ban said they agreed that $100 billion annually until 2020 “could be a good start” not only in financial support but in bridging the gap between developed and developing countries.

How to finance the costs of dealing with climate change was discussed during the Sept. 22 climate summit that the secretary-general chaired at the United Nations and follow-up talks during the meeting of the Group of 20 leading economies in Pittsburgh.

“At long last, leaders focused on climate change financing and got more concrete, with many expressing support for the proposal for $100 billion annually over the next decade” for concrete actions to cut emissions and help nations deal with climate change issues such as floods, drought and extreme temperatures, Ban said.

Ban said 101 heads of state and government took part in the one-day climate summit, the largest ever to deal with global warming.

It took place less than three months before leaders gather in December in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate a new treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first global agreement requiring modest reductions in emissions by industrialized countries.

Buoyed by the U.N. summit, Ban said: “It was much more than I expected in terms of generating political will and leadership role by the world leaders … but there are still many problems in these extremely complex negotiations.”

China and the U.S. each account for about 20 percent of all the world’s greenhouse gas pollution created when coal, natural gas or oil are burned. The European Union is next, generating 14 percent, followed by Russia and India, which each account for 5 percent.

The EU is urging other rich countries to match its pledge to cut emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, and has said it would cut up to 30 percent if other rich countries follow suit.

Democrats in the U.S. Senate are pushing for a 20 percent cut in greenhouse gases by 2020 — deeper than what the House of Representatives has passed and what President Barack Obama wants — according to a long-awaited bill that will test how serious the U.S. is about slowing global warming. It is to be released Wednesday by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Ban told a roundtable luncheon organized by the United Nations Foundation that at Copenhagen, he would like to see developed countries set ambitious mid-term targets for emission cuts and developing countries state their willingness to take “measurable, reportable and verifiable” actions to reduce emissions.

“Copenhagen is not the end of the world,” he said. “We need a good, fair global agreement … We have to have a good start.”

The U.N. chief said it may take the U.S. Senate until after Copenhagen to approve a bill and he has been talking to the EU about taking the lead — “to pull from ahead and push from behind.”

“Politically this is a deadline — Copenhagen,” Ban said. “Legally, it may not be, or practically it might not be. But I have declared that this is a political deadline. We must seal the deal in Copenhagen.”

During the U.N. summit and the G20 meeting, Ban said, there was also a serious debate on how far global temperatures should rise.

“I think there is much support on limiting (the) global temperature rise to within 2 degrees Celsius by 2050,” he said.

But the U.N. chief said small island nations, threatened with being submerged and washed away, want a more stringent limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The secretary-general said he was flying on Wednesday to Sweden, which currently heads the EU, and would then visit Copenhagen and Geneva to keep the spotlight on climate change and discuss the possibility of another summit.