英语访谈节目:很难达成应对气候变化的协定

JUDY WOODRUFF:Finally tonight, what's behind the long struggle to reach a new international agreement on reducing greenhouse gases?

Margaret Warner has our update.

MARGARET WARNER:It's been nearly 15 years since leaders from 37 industrialized countries agreed to reduce their carbon emissions as part of the so-called Kyoto Protocol. But countries would no longer be bound to meet the requirements of the deal after December 2012, even as greenhouse gases are reaching record levels in the atmosphere.

For its part, the U.S. never participated in the Kyoto treaty, after Congress refused to ratify it. House Democrats passed a cap-and-trade bill to reduce heat-trapping emissions in 2009, but it collapsed in the Senate last year.

Today, international negotiators kicked off a new round of talks in Durban, South Africa, to see whether any new agreements are possible. But disagreements were apparent at the outset.

For more, I'm joined by Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post.

And, Juliet, welcome back.

JULIET EILPERIN,The Washington Post: Thanks so much.

MARGARET WARNER:Give us a flavor of the disagreements that were immediately on view on day one of this two-week conference.

JULIET EILPERIN:Well, you can see how far apart the major countries are when you have, for example, the Canadian environment minister back in Ottawa saying that Kyoto is the past, and you had the lead European Union negotiator saying the countries are running from Kyoto and urging them to go forward along with the EU to a second commitment period.

So, clearly, there's a big gulf between many of the countries here.

MARGARET WARNER:So the EU officially would like to actually extend Kyoto beyond next December?

JULIET EILPERIN:They are the only ratified party right now that is willing to commit to a second round of emissions cuts.

MARGARET WARNER:So if they don't get that, what, ideally, at least in the eyes of the U.N. climate people who convened this, would Durban achieve?

JULIET EILPERIN:Well, what they're really hoping to achieve on a broad level is an agreement to essentially talk about a new agreement that would be forged by 2020, that, basically, could the world come together and could all the major emitters agree that they would be legally bound by something else as we go forward?

MARGARET WARNER:So let's go back to the '97 Kyoto agreement that the EU climate negotiator said was the past -- or, rather, the Canadian. How successful was it? In other words, how many of the countries that set binding targets for themselves met them?

JULIET EILPERIN:Well, we're getting—we have had mixed results. And, frankly, the economic recession that we have seen in the last couple years has helped curb emissions somewhat recently.

And so by the end of 2012, there's some countries that, for example, were not on a path to meet their commitments such as Japan which may come in under the deadline, but you had—so—and you had the...

MARGARET WARNER:You mean because of the economic slowdown.

JULIET EILPERIN:Because of the slowdown, that they actually weren't as high.

And so—but you have countries like Canada, for example, that as of 2009 was more than 28 percent above its 1990 levels. And it had pledged to cut its emissions by 6 percent. So while the EU and some countries have met it, most countries have gone well above that.