Battle lines drawn at APEC on climate change

AUSTRALIA: Developing nations led by China are set for a bruising battle with the United States and Australia on climate change, a senior official at a key summit of Asia Pacific nations said Monday.

The veteran Southeast Asian foreign ministry official, who asked not to be named, said talks to craft a separate leaders’ statement on climate change at this week’s APEC are expected to be “bloody.”

China and a group of developing countries that are gravitating towards Beijing’s position on the thorny issue are ranged against developed nations such as summit host Australia and its ally the United States.

“There’s going to be a very big debate,” the official told reporters as officials prepared to draft the statement for their leaders. “The debates will just accentuate the differences.”

Presidents and prime ministers of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum are expected to issue a statement on climate change at the end of their September 8-9 leaders’ meeting, but differences over the content remain significant.

China and other developing countries feel Australia and the United States — the only two countries to have refused to ratify the Kyoto accord on curbing global warming — are trying to undermine the treaty, the source said.

An Australian proposal for APEC to set a goal of reducing “energy intensity” across the region by 25 percent by 2030 would change the formula of commitments under Kyoto, the official said.

Setting quantitative targets “is the most contentious,” he said. “They are essentially changing the rules,” he said, adding that APEC was not a negotiating body.

His remarks followed criticisms by Malaysian Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz that Australia and the United States should not hijack the APEC summit to discuss climate change.

The two countries did not have the credentials to use APEC as a place to tackle climate change because they are not signatories to the Kyoto accord, said Rafidah, who will attend the meetings in Sydney.

“If you want to talk about climate change, please join in with the rest of the global community to make commitments about managing climate change,” Rafidah told reporters in Malaysia last week.

Meanwhile climate change protesters staged a pre-dawn break-in at an Australian power station Monday as a pattern of guerrilla-style raids emerged ahead of an Asia-Pacific summit in Sydney at the weekend.

Four environmental activists chained themselves to a coal-carrying conveyor belt at the Loy Yang power station in the southeastern state of Victoria, just a day after a coal ship was targeted in a port near Sydney.

The power station, which provides nearly a third of Victoria’s electricity, activated emergency procedures and reduced output for five hours while the three men and a woman remained attached to the equipment, a spokesman said.

A police search and rescue crew finally used metal cutters to cut free the demonstrators — who said they belonged to a group called “Real Action on Climate Change” — before arresting them.

A spokeswoman for the activists, Michaela Stubbs, said the protest was one of several planned actions targeting the fossil fuel industry across Australia on Monday.

The demonstrations were designed to send a message to the 21 leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum meeting in Sydney this week, she told national radio.

“We’re already seeing the effects of climate change and it’s our generation and future generations that are going to be dealing with the long-term consequences of climate change,” she said.

“We need to see real action now. Their non-committal, aspirational targets are completely inadequate to stop dangerous climate change.”

Sydney, Monday, AFP