Australia unhappy with Copenhagen draft

At last there's a draft climate deal on the table at Copenhagen - but Australia is
not happy with it.
The official UN deal, issued at the landmark summit on global warming on Friday,
says rich countries must slash greenhouse gas emissions but poorer countries like
China don't have to.
It appears to indicate that developing countries have won the upper hand at the
Copenhagen summit.
Australia's Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, criticised the deal for being too
soft. She's worried that without more action from countries like China and India,
the world's greenhouse gas emissions would be too high to stop global warming.
"We do have some concerns; we think that primarily the problem is that this is not a
document which is capable of delivering the environmental outcome the world needs,"
Senator Wong said of the draft. "It is a document that doesn't provide a credible
option for binding commitments from developing countries."
Various countries have released draft deals at the summit but this one carries more
weight because it's been officially proposed by the summit itself.
The draft deal sets out relatively tough conditions for rich countries like
Australia. They would have to cut emissions by at least 25 per cent by 2020, and by
at least 75 per cent by 2050. But developing countries including China, which is the
world's largest emitter, would only have to cut emissions if they were directly paid
to do so. Their emissions could still go up, but by 15 to 20 per cent less than
business-as-usual over the next decade.
Developing countries would not have to let international observers verify their
emissions data. Developed countries would have to let the observers in.
And the deal doesn't make it clear if developing countries would have to take on
binding promises on emissions. Rich countries would, under a continuation of the
Kyoto protocol.
Senator Wong wants more. "It needs to be an agreement that has force. We want
countries to stand behind their actions," the minister told reporters at the
Copenhagen summit on Friday afternoon.
She said developing countries had to "internationalise" their promises, which means
allow international observers to verify their emissions data.
The draft deal also contains a potential bomb for Australia - it says countries must
achieve their greenhouse targets through action at home.
Australia is planning to meet its target partly by paying poor countries to reduce
their emissions, and counting the savings against its own target.
Erwin Jackson, who is in Copenhagen with Australia's Climate Institute, said the
main problem was that the draft deal did not give a mandate to forge a legally
binding climate deal, which would force everyone to make good on their emissions
targets.
In other climate news, the European Union has pledged to pay more than $US3 billion
($A3.27 billion) a year into a fast-track fund to help developing countries tackle
climate change. Australia has committed to help out, but has not said what it would
pay. Nor has the US.