Ban wants ‘Green New Deal’ on climate change, financial crisis 1

POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 11, 2008 (AFP) -- U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called Thursday for a "Green New Deal" to beat climate change and the economic crisis, as a key E.U. summit began in Brussels and global talks in Poland entered their final 48 hours.

Praising environmental plans by both China and U.S. president-elect Barack Obama, Ban appealed to heads of the European Union, locking horns over their own climate pact, to show the leadership for which the world yearned.

"We need a Green New Deal. This is a deal that works for all nations, rich as well as poor," Ban said in Poznan, where 12 days of U.N. climate talks shifted up a gear with ministerial-level discussions due to wrap up Friday.

"Let us save ourselves from catastrophe and usher in a truly sustainable world," the U.N.'s secretary general said.

"Today we need global solidarity on climate change, the defining challenge of our era."

Ban argued that "a big part" of the massive stimulus to solve the economic crisis should be devoted to investing in a low carbon economy -- "an investment that fights climate change, creates millions of green jobs and spurs green growth."

The Poznan forum is tasked with advancing towards a new global pact for braking the rise in the greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for damaging the world's climate system.

Negotiations among the 192-member U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are mid-way through a two-year "roadmap" set down on the Indonesian island of Bali last year.

In Poznan, the talks are meant to provide the outlines of a negotiation blueprint. Throughout 2009, further haggling will take place with the aim of fleshing out a deal that can be signed in Copenhagen next December.

But the more than 11,500 delegates in Poland kept a worried eye on events in Brussels, where E.U. leaders began a two-day summit amid deep rifts over their own climate pact.

"What we need today is leadership," Ban said. "We look for leadership from the European Union. The decisions currently being made by European leaders in Brussels are [of] great consequences for the whole world."

Its programme sets down the most ambitious goals of any advanced economy, including 20 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, increased use of renewable energy sources and overall energy savings. But Poland, Italy, and Germany are demanding concessions, saying the cost of meeting these targets will unleash massive price rises for energy users and burden overheads for important industries.

The envisioned Copenhagen treaty will amount to an action plan for curbing greenhouse gases and channelling help for vulnerable countries beyond 2012, when current provisions expire under the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol.

It is designed to be the most complex and far-reaching environment deal ever struck.

It has to be, scientists say.

With rare exceptions, studies say climate change is happening and its eventual impact may be even worse than thought, creating human misery on a massive scale as deserts expand, sea levels rise and extreme weather becomes more and more frequent.

But cobbling together a global deal is a tall order, with the complex discussions in Poznan centered on how to share out the commitments and costs of cutting the carbon pollution that stokes global warming.

Rich countries acknowledge their historic role in pushing up global temperatures but they say emerging powers like China and India must also take action.

Developing and poorer nations hit back with the argument that the industrialised world should lead by example, and foot the bill for clean-energy technology and coping with the impact of global warming.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer warned that, unlike shifting cycles in the global economy, climate change was an enduring problem.

"When the world has recovered from the economic recession, it will not have recovered from climate change," he said.

"There is a push for economic recovery that will also achieve green growth and green investments to prevent a next economic crisis sparked by dirty, obsolete investments."

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

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