World leaders on Sunday insisted that the climate deal clinched in desperation at the UN summit was the best that can be done as they returned home to a lashing from critics. Newspapers widely called the summit accord a failure and experts such as the head of a Nobel Peace prize winning climate panel said "urgent" action was now needed.
US President Barack Obama acknowledged that all of the world's polluters would quickly have to do more, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the critics would only hold up the battle against rising temperatures that threaten devastating floods, storms and drought.
Obama returned to the White House and said "extremely difficult and complex negotiations" had been needed in Copenhagen. "This breakthrough lays the foundation for international action in the years to come."
But even the US leader said "we will have to build on the momentum" and get the US Congress to pass mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Merkel, who will host a new international meeting in Germany in 2010, hit back at the critics.
"It is a first step toward a new world climate order, nothing more but also nothing less," she told Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "Those who are only putting Copenhagen down are helping those who want to blockade rather than move forward."
Germany will host a follow-up meeting of environment ministers in Bonn in June, ahead of another summit in Mexico City next December. "We now need to build on Copenhagen," she said. The Copenhagen Accord, only passed by a procedural motion after two weeks of tense negotiations, has been widely condemned as a backdoor deal that excluded the poor and doomed the world to disastrous climate change. The agreement was assembled by the leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and major European nations, after it became clear the 194 nation summit was in danger of failure.
The summit set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), but did not spell out the important global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050 that are the key to holding down temperatures. The summit promised 100 billion dollars for poor nations that risk bearing the brunt of the global warming fallout, but has not given a fixed payout plan.
So far, the United States has promised to contribute 3.6 billion dollars in climate funds for the 2010-2012 period, with Japan contributing a total of 11 billion dollars over the same period, and the European Union 10.6 billion dollars.
Even UN chief General Ban Ki-moons admitted the agreement had failed to win global consensus and would disappoint many who demanded stronger action against climate change. "Many will say that it lacks ambition," Ban told the end of the summit. "Nonetheless, you have achieved much." Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said: "Developing countries, certainly Africa, are very concerned and very suspicious of the developed countries on whether they are really genuine in making these offers."
"We will have build on it, we will have to make sure it moves quickly towards the status of a legally binding agreement and therefore I think the task for the global community is cut out."
"In the next few weeks and months we will have to work very hard to see that, before the end of 2010 if not earlier, we get a binding agreement that really moves action in the direction we need," he told the Indian NDTV television channel. "We really have to move on rather quickly to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. There is growing evidence of the impacts of climate change and if we delay action these impacts are going to become much worse, far more serious," he warned.
The US presidency sought to rally support for the contentious deal by listing prominent Americans who back the plan against global warming. A White House statement included quotes from environmentalists, captains of industry and leading politicians.
Michael Eckhart, head of the American Council on Renewable Energy, applauded Obama's "wisdom in achieving an agreement on the aspirational goal, limiting the outcome which we all care about, because this will stand to rule all else that comes in future negotiations." The Wall Street Journal called the Copenhagen deal "a pre-emptive dead letter because countries like China, Brazil and India said they were unwilling to accept anything that depressed their economic growth." Saying that China would likely continue to get a "free climate pass," it said "we can't wait to hear Mr Obama tell Americans that he wants them to pay higher taxes so the US can pay China to become more energy efficient and thus more economically competitive."
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