Gordon Brown calls for revival of deadlocked climate talks
19 Oct 2009
British prime minister Gordon Brown on Monday called upon world leaders to make personal efforts to break deadlocked talks to agree to a global climate change deal in December.
The British prime minister is among a handful of leaders from the leading developed economies to have announced plans to attend the 7-18 December Copenhagen talks, led by the UN. The meet, to be attended by environment ministers, will discuss whether to replace the existing Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 or extend the existing arrangement.
Brown told a meeting of energy and environment ministers and representative of 17 of the world's main polluting nations gathered in London that the leaders must engage directly to break the impasse.
Many analysts and lawmakers remain skeptical of a deal emerging from the December meet, pointing to the extra-tight deadline and the lack of progress on issues, including emissions reduction targets.
Brown said that he believed an agreement at Copenhagen was possible, but the fact needed to be faced that negotiators were not getting anywhere near to an agreement quickly enough.
The two-year UN talks initiated in Bali, Indonesia in 2007, are stalled with nations split on the size of emission cuts that rich nations need to make by 2020 and how much should developing countries be paid by them to prepare for and slow global warming.
