SINGAPORE — The world remains on a path toward a new treaty to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, blamed by some scientists for warming the planet to potentially dangerous levels. But clinching a comprehensive deal designed to control climate change has been made increasingly difficult as both developed and developing countries argue over how to apportion costly emission cuts at a time of deepening global recession.
This is the conclusion many officials and environmental activists have reached in the aftermath of the latest round of United Nations-sponsored negotiations in Poznan, involving over 185 states. The meeting in Poland, held Dec. 1-13, was the halfway point in a two-year process intended to lead to a final international agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009.
It was never going to be easy to conclude an effective successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. However, the difficulty in hammering out an accord among such a large number of countries with such divergent interests has been magnified by the slump in the global economy and fossil-fuel prices. When prices were high for these fuels, it brought them closer to the cost of some renewable energy sources, including wind and solar power, which often have to be subsidized to make them competitive.