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Obama Buzz Reaches Climate Change Talks

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 30, 2008

Updated: 11/30/2008 12:56 am

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The president-elect won't be there, but an Obama buzz will crackle through the conference hall when negotiators gather Monday for a final push toward a sweeping new global warming treaty.

"America is back," says Sen. John Kerry, underscoring that Barack Obama's election signals a U.S. intent to regain a leadership role on climate change.

"After eight years of obstruction and delay and denial, the United States is going to rejoin the world community in tackling this global challenge."

Delegates from nearly 190 countries gather for two weeks in Poznan, Poland, meeting for the fourth time in the past year. Previous talks have witnessed bickering, clashes and compromise in what the top U.N. climate official calls the most difficult and complex international negotiation in history.

They have set a deadline of December 2009 to complete an accord on reducing worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.

Delegates say Obama's election promises to energize a process that until now has been burdened by a U.S. reluctance to endorse any international climate regime.

"In Poznan there will be a buzz - we can call it the American buzz," said Jake Schmidt, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The U.S. is back in the conversation, and back with a leader that gets it."

The Poznan conference is the halfway mark in a two-year negotiation to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which obliged 37 industrial countries to slash carbon emissions below 1990 levels by an average 5 percent by 2012.

Washington refused to ratify the protocol. President George W. Bush argued it would hurt the U.S. economy while making no demands on emerging economic powers like China, which has surpassed the United States as the world's biggest polluter.

Despite the high expectations of Obama, it will be months before his impact is felt on the negotiations.

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