'Meaningful' climate deal reached?

World leaders have reached a “meaningful” climate accord but it is not sufficient to combat the threat of global warming, a senior US official said on Friday.

The official said that President Barack Obama reached a deal after talks with the leaders of emerging economies China, India and South Africa. It was expected to be presented to other delegations at a 194-nation summit.

“A meaningful agreement was reached,” the official said on condition of anonymity at the close of 12 days of talks in the Danish capital.

“It’s not sufficient to combat the threat of climate change but it’s an important first step,” he said.
Obama also held talks with leaders of key European states at the end of the closely watched conference, which is tasked with finding ways to combat climate change after 2012 when the current Kyoto Protocol’s obligations run out.

The official said the United States and developing nations agreed to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

The UN’s Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said that voracious use of coal and other fossil fuels would see planetary warming of up to 6.4 degrees Celsius by 2100 unless carbon pollution was deeply slashed.

The US official said officials had also agreed to work out a mechanism for wealthy nations to provide financing to help developing nations curb their own emissions and cope with the impacts of warming.

Countries would also provide “national communications” on how they were tackling global warming, through “international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines.”

China had earlier bristled at anything called “verification” of its plan to cut the intensity of its carbon emissions, seeing it as an infringement on its sovereignty and saying that rich nations bore primary responsibility for global warming.

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