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Wikileaks Reveal Secret US China COP Talks
Secret talks between the U.S. and China prior to both COP15 and COP16 ensured that neither nation would commit to reduce emissions.
Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks last week confirmed suspicions that the U.S. and Chinese governments held secret talks to undermine worldwide climate emission agreements.
According to the cables, in May 2009, Senator John Kerry told the Deputy Prime Minister in Beijiny, Minister Li Kequiang, that they would draw up “a new basis for ‘major cooperation‘ between the United States and China on climate change.”
The cables happened prior to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen that same year (COP15), when both the U.S. and China would not commit to enforced emission reduction targets.
Secret discussions between the two countries to resist emissions targets began under President George W. Bush, and helped ensure that no lasting impact would be made by the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the first attempt to institute worldwide emission reductions, particularly from industrialized nations.
The U.S signed the Kyoto protocol, but never ratified it; so only European nations are actually bound to make the reductions it outlines.
Great hope for a more serious commitment from the world’s top two producers – U.S. and China preceded COP15 in Copenhagen last December. But there, too, private talks undermined any real progress.
As an article in the German publication Der Speigel said: “…at the decisive moment Europe‘s politicians were forced to stand by helplessly while China, India, South Africa and Brazil met in a hotel room and took matters into their own hands.
They took the draft Copenhagen agreement and struck off all binding obligations. Later on the plotters were joined by Barack Obama.
The outcome of this watered-down arrangement is now known as the ‘Copenhagen Accord.‘ In international negotiations, this vague draft resolution now stands alongside the specific plan demanded by the Europeans.”
The leaked cables reveal, the U.S. tried to bribe poor nations such as the Maldives offering financial aid in exchange for their cooperation with the weak Copenhagen Accord.
Valere Tjolle
Valere Tjolle is editor of the Sustainable Tourism Report Suite 2011 – latest news on the suite at
www.travelmole.com/stories/1145712.php
Valere
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