Gordon Brown has blamed China and United State’s lack of “ambition” for the failure of the Copenhagen climate change summit.
The Prime Minister rounded on the “flawed” and “chaotic” summit process and demanded that it be overhauled. Mr Brown is angry at the failure of the talks, warned that never again could “a handful of nations” hold the rest “to ransom.”
Mr Brown invested a large amount of time in the process, but yesterday was forced to admit that the results were far from what had been hoped for after years of lobbying. He said the European Union was prepared to go to cut emissions by 30 per cent, but other needed to follow.
He said: “What we need is not just one part of the world going to higher ranges of ambitions, we need the other parts of the world as well,” Mr Brown said.
“If America and China were able to show that they were doing more, and I believe that they could, then all countries – Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea – all these countries that have got ranges would be prepared to go to their highest level of ambition.”
The Copenhagen talks went through the night on Friday and ended only with a tentative agreement between countries. More than 190 countries produced an accord which simply noted that average world temperature rises should not exceed 2C but without commitments to emissions cuts to achieve it.
The way the late-night and last minute bartering went on clearly upset Mr Brown who had staked much on getting a meaningful text which could be signed up to by all countries. That the decision-making process was “at best flawed, at worst chaotic”, Mr Brown said.
On a Downing Street podcast he added: “Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down those talks; never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries.
“One of the frustrations for me was the lack of a global body with the sole responsibility for environmental stewardship. I believe that in 2010 we will need to look at reforming our international institutions to meet the common challenges we face as a global community.”
The fall-out from the failure of the talks continued yesterday with charities, environmentalists and governments all joining the blame game. Mr Brown and Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, clearly believes China is responsible for blocking progress at the UN-sponsored summit and he called for a new international body to take charge of future negotiations.
Oxfam joined the calls for a revamp of the negotiating system to avoid a repeat of what Archbishop Desmond Tutu, its ‘global ambassador’ called the “profoundly distressing” failure of the talks to get a binding deal.
The aid charity warned that by the time of the next scheduled round of UN-sponsored talks, in Mexico in December, around 150,000 people would have died and a million been displaced as a result of climate change.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said: “It’s disappointing overall because there are no carbon reduction targets, the details on help for poorer countries to tackle global warming is vague and it’s not a legally binding treaty.”
*FOUR Greenpeace campaigners are being held without trial in a Danish prison until next year. The four are being held in isolation until 7 January after three of them got onto the red carpet at a banquet being hosted by the Danish Queen for world leaders last week and unfurled small banners which read “Politicians Talk, Leaders Act”.
