Industrial nations shy away from stiff 2020 goals

Industrial nations were shying away from fixing stiff 2020 guidelines for greenhouse gases cuts at UN talks on Friday in what environmentalists said would be a vote for "dangerous" climate change.
A draft text at the UN talks dropped a demand that developed nations should be "guided" by a need for steep cuts in greenhouse gases of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 in working out a long-term fight against global warming.
"There are a limited number of problems still with the text," said Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat. He predicted a compromise by the end of the August 27-31 talks among 1,000 delegates with "something for everyone".
The European Union and many developing nations such as China and India want industrial states to use the stringent 25-40 percent range to guide future talks to force a shift away from fossil fuels, blamed by UN reports for stoking global warming.
But Russia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland objected to setting the stringent range in negotiations about extending the UN's Kyoto Protocol, the main plan for fighting global warming that runs to 2012, delegates said.
"The lower the stabilisation level (of greenhouse gases) achieved, the lower the consequent damages," the draft said. It mentions the option of 25-40 percent cuts but drops a previous reference to them as an indicative guide for future work.
Kyoto binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a first step to contain warming that could bring more floods, desertification, disease and raise sea levels.
The talks are the first chance for Kyoto backers to see if they can agree a range for industrial nations' talks on a new climate pact that many governments want to agree in 2009.
The United States has not ratified Kyoto and thus is not involved. President George W. Bush has separately called a meeting of major emitters in Washington on September 27-28. Overall, de Boer said that the week had made some progress. Cuts of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 are the stiffest scenario by the UN's climate panel in a May 2007 report seen as limiting global warming to 2.0 to 2.4 Celsius (3.6 to 4.3 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
The EU, which has said it will unilaterally cut emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and by 30 percent if other nations follow suit, and environmentalists say that any gain in temperatures above 2 Celsius will bring dangerous changes.