Obama Calls for Developing Nations to Reduce Emissions

Posted November 16th, 2011 at 7:30 am (UTC-5)
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U.S. President Barack Obama says the United States will urge emerging economies to do more to address global warming at a high-level climate change conference later this month in Durban, South Africa.

President Obama told reporters Wednesday during his visit to Australia that the Durban talks should result in reduced carbon emissions, but warned that “advanced economies can't do this alone.”

Mr. Obama said that emerging economies “like China and India” must also “take seriously their responsibilities” in reducing emissions.

President Obama acknowledged that the U.S. has not been able to pass a cap-and-trade system aimed at regulating pollution, but noted U.S. efforts at increasing fuel efficiency and exploring clean energy options.

Delegates from 193 countries at the U.N.-sponsored talks, which begin on November 28, will seek to find a compromise on a new international agreement on climate change.

The conference will also consider ways to raise $100 billion a year for the Green Climate Fund, which aims to help countries cope with global warming.

But few believe that the two-day conference will result in a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which committed industrialized countries to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by a set amount by 2012.

The U.S. was the only major country to reject the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that it would have hurt the U.S. economy and that developing nations should have also been required to make cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions.

Coordinated international efforts to reduce emissions have made little progress since the failure of a climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009.