Meager progress

Six Greenpeace campaigners have been arrested on the sidelines of climate talks in Durban, South Africa, as ministerial delegates begin to arrive for the conference's final week.

The activists were attempting to hang a banner that read "Listen to the People, not the Polluters" at a hotel that was hosting a side-event organized by business groups.

The environmental lobby accused executives of the oil company Royal Dutch Shell, the South African utility Eskom and the private American conglomerate Koch Industries of belonging to a "Dirty Dozen" of carbon intensive profiteers holding back action on climate change.

"Meeting in the shadow of the vital UN talks, these dirty dozen companies should be ashamed of their role in undermining global talks to tackle climate change," said Greenpeace International head Kumi Naidoo, in a statement.

Meager progress

As the talks in Durban enter their high-level phase, there appears to be little hope of reaching a consensus on efforts to extend or replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Canada has indicated that it may withdraw from Kyoto before its first commitment period officially expires next year.

Together with Russia, Japan and the United States, Canada appears unmoved by developing countries' arguments that the world cannot afford to lose its only legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The European Union is seeking a compromise that would extend Kyoto's rules while drawing large emitters not currently covered by the treaty, such as China and the United States, into a timetable for legally binding commitments.

The pressure is building on negotiators to match actions to the demands of the science.

At the weekend, a new study revealed that the world's fossil emissions have jumped 49 percent in the past two decades.

According to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, emissions are currently rising at 3.1 percent per annum, three times the pace they were in the 1990s.

"Taking action to reverse current trends is urgent," said co-author Prof Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor at the University of East Anglia, in a statement accompanying the report.

"Global CO2 emissions since 2000 are tracking the high end of the projections used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which far exceed two degrees warming by 2100, yet governments have pledged to keep warming below two degrees to avoid the most dangerous aspects of climate change such as widespread water stress and sea level rise, and increases in extreme climatic events," Quéré's statement said.

Dirty Dozen

Greenpeace says the ambitions of national governments are being hampered by a relatively small group of lobbyists around the world.

The organization's "Dirty Dozen" report, released on the sidelines of the meeting in Durban, singled out companies that were deploying a "variety of techniques" to undermine policies to curb carbon emissions, "while making public statements that appear to show their concern for climate change."

These techniques included political donations, using trade groups and think tanks to lobby against tighter climate regulations and exploiting a "'revolving door' between public servants and carbon-intensive corporations."

It said trade organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce and BusinessEurope were becoming increasingly isolated from the majority of their members, responding chiefly to the interests of a few heavy polluters.

Of the $32 million the US Chamber of Commerce spent on lobbying in midterm elections last year, 94 percent went to climate change-denying candidates, according to the campaign organization 350.org, which contributed to the report.

In Europe, more than 100 companies that support raising the European Union's current emission reduction targets take the opposite line of the trade group that represents them, the report said.

Author: Nathan Witkop (AFP, dpa)
Editor: John Blau