BAN LEADER. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon started off Monday's summit on climate change – the first of its kind for the UN -- by attempting to reaffirm the importance of the UN in crafting a post-Kyoto plan. In his opening remarks, he made not-so-subtle jabs at the Bush administration's attempts to undermine today's meeting with talks later in the week between the heads of state from only the world's biggest economies.
"The U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating global action," said Ban, who called today's meeting in hopes that it would push the nations toward targets and deadlines for December's meeting in Bali.
Bush, who has long-opposed any forced compliance on emissions targets, is not in attendance for today's meetings, but he will be at a dinner meeting tonight that Ban called with roughly 20 world leaders. The Bush administration has resisted any discussion of targets and mandatory cuts, which they maintain would be damaging to the U.S. economy, proposing instead that we rely on voluntary cuts and increased investment in technological innovations. He is expected to push this at his meetings later in the week, while most of the delegates speaking in the mitigation plenary session today will be calling for concrete, mandatory cuts, carbon trading schemes, and system that both affords flexibility to distinguish between developed and developing countries and locks major emitters into a series of cuts.
Ban argued that inaction will prove far more dangerous to both the U.S. and the world's economy than cutting emissions now. ''Inaction now will prove the costliest action of all in the long term,'' he said.
--Kate Sheppard
