U.N. climate talks draft agreement: Rich nations must make big emission cuts

COPENHAGEN — Wealthy nations would commit to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade, and the world should strive to nearly eliminate them — or at least cut them in half — by 2050 under a draft agreement circulated Friday at the U.N. climate talks.

The draft pulled together the main elements of a global pact that 192 nations have been negotiating for two years, but left numbers on financing and cutting greenhouse gas emissions — perhaps the most contentious bargaining issues — for world leaders to hammer out next week.

The draft accord said all countries together should reduce emissions by 50 percent to 95 percent by 2050, and rich countries should cut emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020, in both cases using 1990 as the baseline year.

It was meant to focus attention on the broad goals the world must achieve to avoid irreversible change in climate that scientists say could bring many species to extinction and cause upheavals in the human environment in many parts of the Earth.

"It's time to begin to focus on the big picture," said Yvo de Boer, the top U.N. climate official. "The serious discussion on finance and targets has begun."

In unusually blunt language, meanwhile, China's vice foreign minister said the chief U.S. negotiator at the talks either "lacks common sense" or was "extremely irresponsible" for saying that no U.S. climate funding should be going to China. The world's two biggest greenhouse gas polluters have been exchanging barbs this week about the sincerity of their pledges to fight climate change.

So far, pledges from the industrial countries amounted to far less than the minimum. But the European Union, at a summit in Brussels, said it was raising its 2020 target to 30 percent, in a gambit intended to push other wealthy nations to deepen their emissions-reduction pledges during negotiations next week.

The six-page draft document distilled a much-disputed 180-page negotiating text, laying out the obligations of industrial and developing countries in curbing the growth of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

News of the document came as the European Union leaders agreed in Brussels to commit $3.6 billion (euro2.4 billion) a year until 2012 to a short-term fund to help poor countries cope with climate change. Most of the money came from Britain, France and Germany. Many cash-strapped former East bloc countries balked at donating but eventually all gave at least a token amount to preserve the 27-nation bloc's unity.