http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacbeat/stories/200912/s2759429.htm

With less than a week until the United Nations climate talks, the United Nations' chief negotiator has denied suggestions the Copenhagen meeting will be a 'failure'. Instead, he is confident the conference will deliver an agreement, with ambitious targets from rich nations, and commitments to cut emissions growth by the developing world.


But he says a legally binding treaty is unlikely to be delivered until June 2010.

His comments come as the squabbling over the Australian government's proposed emissions trading scheme continues.

Presenter: Sarah Clarke
Speaker: Yvo de Boer, United Nations' climate change negotiator

YVO DE BOER: What the international community cares about most is what the Australian Government commits to in terms of an emissions target, especially for 2020, and of course the Government's position is significantly strengthened if it already has cap and trade legislation in place but that is above all an issue of domestic importance.

SARAH CLARKE: A key group of Opposition MPs here in Australia, including shadow frontbenchers, have questioned the science behind global warming. Does this disappoint you that at this stage of the scientific debate there are still people who question that?

YVO DE BOER: No, I think it is good that the science is continuously being questioned. Climate change is a very complicated issue that we are continuously finding out more about. The scientific community is giving us very clear signals that we are responsible for accelerated global climate change but that doesn't mean that we should sit back and not take all the science that appears at face value.

SARAH CLARKE: So if we don't get a treaty at this meeting which is looking highly likely, then has Copenhagen failed in that sense?

YVO DE BOER: No, it hasn't. I think we can get a clear agreement in Copenhagen and an agreement that specifies 2020 emission reduction targets for rich nations and an agreement that specifies what major developing countries like China will do to limit the growth of their emissions. An agreement that specifies financial support to developing countries and an agreement that specifies that some time in the course of 2010, I hope by June 2010, this all needs to be put into treaty language so you get the legally binding package as well.

SARAH CLARKE: OK, so what is needed then in that agreement to avoid a two degrees temperature rise?

YVO DE BOER: What we need are ambitious emission reduction targets on the part of industrialised countries. The scientific community has said that if you want to, for example, avoid a two degree temperature increase then rich countries need to reduce their emissions by 20 to 40 per cent by 2020 and major developing countries need to limit the growth of their emissions below business as usual by somewhere between 15 and 30 per cent. So that is roughly the sort of beacon that the scientific community has offered in terms of what we should be aiming towards.

SARAH CLARKE: The United States and China then, they have now been forthcoming with targets of sort. Are they ambitious enough?

YVO DE BOER: Well, given the fact that there has been very little climate change policy in the United States over the past eight years, I think that the US target is quite ambitious and President Obama has, of course, to remain within the political realities that he is confronted with. Secondly China already has a very ambitious or aggressive national climate change policy in place and has just offered to top that up quite significantly. What you are not, of course, going to see is China running miles ahead of the United States in a process where those countries feel they, both of them feel they need to be making an effort that is comparable to the other.