The FINANCIAL — The two-week United Nations Climate Change conference formally opened Monday in Copenhagen. Climate negotiators and political leaders from 192 countries are attending the summit.
Delegates filled the gigantic meeting room in Copenhagen's Bella Center to begin hammering out a global climate agreement to cut greenhouse gases that a vast majority of scientists say are driving climate change, ABC News reports. At the end of the second week of the conference, 110 world leaders will arrive in Copenhagen including President Barack Obama.
The conference, the climax of two years of contentious negotiations, convened in an upbeat mood after a series of promises by rich and emerging economies to curb their greenhouse gases, but with major issues yet to be resolved, as AP wrote. Conference president Connie Hedegaard said the key to an agreement is finding a way to raise and channel public and private financing to poor countries for years to come to help them fight the effects of climate change.
Hedegaard — Denmark's former climate minister — said if governments miss their chance at the Copenhagen summit, a better opportunity may never come, according to the same source. "This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one. If ever," she said in prepared remarks.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen warned that the world turned to Copenhagen to safeguard the generations of tomorrowm, AFP wrote. "The world is depositing hope with you for a short while," he said. "For the next two weeks, Copenhagen will be Hopenhagen. By the end, we must be able to deliver back to the world what was granted us here today: hope for a better future."
Opening ceremonies began with a short sci-fi film featuring children of the future facing an apocalypse of tempests and desert landscapes if world leaders failed to act today, according to AFP. "Please help save the world," said a terrified little girl at the end of the film.
At the talk's opening ceremony the UN's chief climate official Yvo de Boer said the negotiations will only be a success if they deliver ''significant and immediate action'' on global warming, Telegraph reports. And the chairman of the UN's expert Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, said as the evidence was ''now overwhelming'' the world needs to take early action on global warming.
He told the opening of the conference that the ''global community has a moral and material responsibility'' to limit the impacts of climate change on vulnerable countries who are most at risk of flooding, storms, droughts and rising sea levels brought on by increases in temperatures, as the same source informs.
Delegates will tackle several sticking points, including how much wealthy, major polluters like the United States should cut their greenhouse gas output, according to ABC News. "Differences can be overcome if the political will is present, and I believe it is," declared Rasmussen.
Obama will bring with him a proposal to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020, and pledge an 83 percent reduction by 2050, the same source reports. China and India have also pledged their own cuts.
In the UK, the run up to the negotiations has been dogged by the leaking of stolen emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit which climate sceptics claim show evidence that researchers were manipulating data to support a theory of man-made global warming, Telegraph reports. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband has warned that those who argue climate change is not the result of human actions are ''profoundly irresponsible''.
''The overwhelming consensus of scientists across the world is that climate change is real and is man-made and is happening,'' he told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, according to the same source. ''The people who do somehow want to suggest that the science is in doubt are profoundly irresponsible.''
Negotiations have dragged on for two years, only recently showing signs of breakthroughs with new commitments from The United States, China and India to control greenhouse gas emissions, AP reports. The first week of the conference will be focused on refining a complex text of a draft treaty. But major decisions will await the arrival next week of environment ministers and the heads of state in the final days of the conference, which is due to end Dec. 18.
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