Small groups of negotiators worked through the night on some of the thorniest issues, among them how to keep the frayed 1997 Kyoto Protocol from falling apart and how to ensure that countries are making progress toward their goals of reducing emissions that contribute to global warming.
Patricia Espinosa, the Mexican foreign secretary and the chairwoman of the talks, warned the delegates that they were running out of time, and urged them to redouble their efforts to reach some agreement before the meeting’s scheduled conclusion on Friday evening.
China and the United States, the world’s largest emitters of heat-trapping gases, remained deadlocked Friday morning on measures for ensuring that each was adhering to its pledges. Smaller countries were seeking stronger assurances that the money promised by wealthy countries to help vulnerable states adapt to the effects of global warming would actually begin to flow.
As technical experts worked on details and diplomatic language, many of the participants were asking broader questions about the future of the talks, which involve more than 190 nations and have yet to produce an effective and binding agreement.
“Climate change is a long-term problem that won’t be addressed in one meeting or one agreement,” said Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard University and a longtime observer of the United Nations process. “Countries are already taking actions on their own and moving toward international cooperation on these issues. That may be a more productive course than a single, stand-alone, top-down agreement.”
Chris Huhne, Britain’s secretary of state for energy and climate change, expressed the concern of many that governments would become weary of the expense and the fruitlessness of the process, which has been going on for 16 years.
“The worrying scenario would be that this process becomes a zombie conference,” Mr. Huhne said, “and people will say, ‘Next year, we’re not going to send a minister, we’ll send a civil servant.’ ”
Still, the delegates here worked diligently toward a universal agreement, even though the conference’s goals this year are modest and their effect on the global climate is likely to be small.
Participants described the meetings as businesslike and largely free of the cant and bluster that has marred past sessions, although for fans of drama, the fiery Bolivian leader Evo Morales did not disappoint.
At a press conference on Thursday, he raged against wealthy nations for dictating to poorer countries how they should develop, and for turning rainforests and other natural resources into commodities that are traded on far-off financial exchanges. Mr. Morales walked out of the talks briefly earlier in the week to protest the disproportionate power that the rich countries wield here.
“We talk about the effects and not the causes of the multiple crises we face: the climate crisis, the food crisis, the energy crisis,” Mr. Morales said. “The climate crisis is one of the crises of capitalism.”
He warned of the dire outcome if delegates did not renew the Kyoto agreement, which binds rich nations to emissions targets and directs a flow of money to poorer nations to adapt to the effects of climate change.
“If, from here, we send the Kyoto Protocol to the rubbish bin, we are responsible for ecocide and genocide, because we will be sending many people to their deaths,” Mr. Morales said.
By: John M. Broder
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