Think tank: Do-gooder Gore has it all wrong

Tony Allwright

Halfway through the climate change conference in Copenhagen, and still nobody seems to be willing to address the Climategate science fraud scandal that is crumbling the foundations of the global warming narrative.
In their new book Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner also challenge that narrative. They suggest that warming isn’t caused by human-generated carbon dioxide, to the predictable outrage of numerous “global warm-mongers”.
The contribution of carbon dioxide (CO2) to (alleged) global warming has become such an accepted piece of conventional wisdom that few seem to question it any more. “The science is settled,” we are admonished. We must curtail our CO2 emissions — or else. So cars are taxed according to their emissions; carbon levies and taxes are imposed; carbon-trading schemes are created; green ministers spend taxpayers’ money to “offset” CO2 emitted jetting around the world; the British government plans legislation to force people to reduce their carbon footprints; and we should all turn vegetarian.
Yet science, unlike some scientists, screams out that man’s CO2 cannot possibly cause global warming. Consider the molecular physics — it’s not that difficult.
Carbon dioxide forms only 0.04% of our atmosphere, so its molecules are widely dispersed. The space between them is almost 200 times their diameter. As altitude increases, air density decreases, which scatters them still further.
CO2 molecules warm our atmosphere by giving off heat when they vibrate. What makes them vibrate is electromagnetic radiation in the infrared range, which reflects off the Earth’s surface. However, spectrometry shows that only 8% of the infrared spectrum can actually do this. Moreover, the radiation excites CO2 molecules only if they collide. Thus, CO2 can cause global warming only to the extent that just 8% of infrared rays can hit tiny, widely distributed targets. You don’t have to be a physicist to see that this can be a pretty long shot. But it gets longer.
Of that 0.04% of CO2 in the air, 97% comes overwhelmingly from the oceans, but also volcanoes, rotting plant matter, burning forests and, interestingly, gases that animals emit (hence that call to vegetarianism). Human activity contributes only 3% of the 0.04%, or 12 parts per million. This pushes the spacing between these CO2 molecules to some 600 times their diameter, and wider still at higher altitudes.
So, for man-made global warming to occur, 8% of infrared rays must bull’s-eye onto the few man-made, widely dispersed, minute CO2 molecules. To turn this into a practical analogy: suppose I start machine-gunning pinhead targets two millimetres across. I will find it very difficult to hit many of these pinheads if they happen to be scattered one to 1.5 metres apart. All the more so if all but 8% of my bullets are duds.
But that is, essentially, Al Gore’s hypothesis — that those infrared “bullets” are colliding with tiny, yet vastly spaced man-made CO2 molecules so consistently that they warm the earth. James Peden, a renowned atmospheric physicist, has written an excellent layman’s guide to the science (visit tinyurl.com/2zmvhl) that Gore would do well to study.
If the human CO2 global-warming hypothesis collapses at the first scrutiny of the science, as I maintain it does, and before we get into the contradictory observed evidence, how on earth can Gore become an Oscar-winning Nobel peace laureate multimillionaire simply by giving the same “inconvenient [un]truth” lecture over and over for an appearance fee believed to be $180,000 (€122,000)?
Perhaps it’s because that’s where the money is. In 2007, the US Senate committee on environment and public works observed that, over a decade, funding of $50 billion had gone to global-warming proponents, as against just $19m on the case for denial. Nevertheless, the warm-mongers in Copenhagen will eventually learn that they cannot alter the laws of physics.
What will the cost to the world be in wasted wealth and effort? Small and broke, Ireland is supposed to cough up €12 billion to meet spurious emission targets, but the biggest cost will be to the world’s poorest, in suppressed development opportunities. These are the very people the global warm-mongers like to pretend they are saving.
Tony Allwright is an engineering and industrial safety consultant who blogs at www.tallrite.com/blog.htm

Are energy efficiency measures mere greenwash?

The latest green initiatives are being dismissed as drops in the ocean
Alexandra Goss

Alistair Darling announced he was ploughing £200m into measures to improve energy efficiency in last week’s pre-budget report but critics have warned these are merely a drop in the ocean.
Top of the bill is a £50m boiler scrappage scheme — modelled on the existing car scrappage scheme — which the chancellor claims will help 125,000 households trade in their inefficient boilers. He also announced that anyone who generates their own electricity will get tax-free cashback worth £900 a year from April.
The additional £150m will be used to extend the Warm Front programme, which will provide better heating and insulation for an additional 75,000 of the most vulnerable households. We look at how the measures stack up.
Boiler scrappage scheme
This headline-grabbing announcement claims that 125,000 households could receive grants of up to £400 towards replacing their old, inefficient boiler.
Anyone with a so-called G-rated boiler, which uses up to 30% more gas than a new one, will be eligible for the scheme if they replace it with a more energy-efficient A-rated model, which can cost up to £2,000. G-rated boilers are typically more than 15 years old.
Such a measure could cut household energy bills by up to a quarter — a saving of £235 a year for an average family home, according to the Energy Saving Trust. Gas boilers also account for 60% of the carbon emissions from an average gas-heated home and the measures announced last week would save 1.26 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year for each affected household.
It sounds great in theory but the pre-budget report failed to provide details of how individuals could apply, when the scheme will start, or whether it will be extended once the £50m runs out. A representative from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which will oversee the rollout of the programme, said: “We will launch the scheme at the earliest opportunity next year.
“Residential households and privately-rented homes will be the main beneficiaries and it will not be means-tested, as far as I’m aware. As ever, the devil is in the detail.”
Indeed, it is not clear how the estimated 4.2m people in the UK with a G-rated boiler are going to benefit. Giving each of them £400 towards upgrading their heating systems would require funding of almost £1.7 billion — 34 times the £50m that has been set aside by the government.
Barbara Bell at KPMG, the accountant, said: “This measure may sound great on paper but it is merely a drop in the ocean when you look at the millions of people who have an inefficient boiler in the UK. With gas boilers accounting for such a huge proportion of the carbon emissions from an average gas-heated home, the government still has a long way to go.
“It will be interesting to see whether the scheme is extended once it expires. If it is, it could really begin to make an impact.”
Tax-free clean energy cashback
In July, Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, announced that households would be encouraged to generate their own power through a “clean energy cashback” system, under which they would be paid for any power they produce — whether they use it or not.
So-called “feed-in tariffs” will come into effect in April and will pay for the electricity households generate through solar panels or a wind turbine. Under the plans, homeowners will be paid up to 36Åp for every kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity produced using solar panels.
If electricity is exported back to the National Grid — when the homeowner is away, for example — an additional 5p per kWh is paid, while savings are still being made on electricity bills.
Darling added to this in last Wednesday’s pre-budget report, announcing that these feed-in tariffs, worth an average £900 a year, would become free of income tax.
The Treasury claims this will save households paying basic-rate tax of £180 in 2010 but this is nonetheless small beer compared with the cost of installing a solar panel, which can be as much as £10,000, according to Sharp Solar, the UK’s largest solar panel manufacturer.
It said that the “pay-back” time for solar panels — the time it takes to recoup an initial investment of £10,000 — would shrink from 14 years to 10 as a result of the measures.
The figures assume you pay £10,000 upfront but earn £828 a year from the feed-in tariffs and save £138 a year on your energy bill — a total of £966, recouping the installation costs in 10 years.
Douglas Watkinson at Deloitte, the accountant, said: “While the changes are welcome, they do add to the complexity of the various incentives available.
“The sheer number of measures makes it harder for investors to understand and take advantage of them.”
Warm Front
The chancellor said the £150m increase in funding for the Warm Front scheme would help an additional 75,000 vulnerable people to receive energy efficiency measures.
Warm Front operates only in England and offers people on benefits up to £3,500 to pay for central heating, loft insulation, draught-proofing, cavity wall insulation and water tank lagging.
Darling also pledged to help a million more vulnerable households with discounts on their energy bills by increasing the level of support that energy companies must provide from £150m to £300m by 2013-14.
Audrey Gallacher at Consumer Focus, the consumer watchdog, said: “The additional money will help to prevent thousands of low-income households from suffering cold, damp homes and fuel bills they can’t afford.”
HOMES HOLIDAY ENDS
The chancellor confirmed that the stamp duty holiday on homes worth up to £175,000 will end on December 31, with the threshold reverting to £125,000. This means buyers will pay 1% on homes between £125,000 and £250,000; 3% between £250,000 and £500,000, and 4% thereafter.
However, aspiring homeowners could benefit from the £150m boost to the Home Buy Direct scheme, which will help 3,000 more people. The Support for Mortgage Interest scheme, which helps those who suffer a sudden drop in income, will also be extended for another six months.

Snort more cocaine and the rainforest dies

Marie Woolf

Don’t sniff: cocaine users are killing the planet. Every time they snort a line, part of the rainforest dies — or so say the police in a new campaign against drugs.
They hope that appealing to young people’s environmental concerns will prove more effective than urging them to “just say no” to drugs. Linking with Greenpeace, the police plan to spread the message that for every gram of cocaine made, four square metres of rainforest are destroyed.
Chris Pearson, drug analyst at the Metropolitan police’s intelligence bureau, said: “The cocaine trade is destroying the rainforest. Young people don’t tend to listen to the police, but they might listen to Greenpeace and they might listen to their peers.”
The move is backed by the government. Vernon Coaker, the schools minister, said: “Teaching young people about the devastating environmental consequences of the drugs industry is one way we can tackle drug usage, though we need to balance this with giving young people clear information and advice on the other effects of drugs.”
Virgin rainforest is cleared for illegal coca plantations while toxic chemicals are used to process the leaves. Discarded chemicals, which are dumped in the forest and its rivers, poison rare plants and animals.
Law enforcement agencies destroy fragile ecosystems when they target illegal coca plantations, often dropping more chemicals on them from the air.
Environmentalists hope that images of rainforest destruction will make cocaine use as politically incorrect as wearing fur from animals caught in the wild. “Just telling young people that using cocaine is bad doesn’t work,” said John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace.
“You need to change teenage culture and point out that it has all sorts of consequences. Then they start talking about it more loudly and you could get into that fur coat situation.”
The new approach follows evidence that cocaine use is increasing among young people in the UK, partly driven by lower prices.
Some MPs believe the “save the planet” message will also appeal to environmentally conscious middle-class cocaine users.

Don’t let West carry carbon burden, urge firms

Tricia Holly Davis in Copenhagen
BUSINESS leaders at the United Nations climate-change summit in Copenhagen are pushing European nations not to bow to pressure from developing nations to increase targets for greenhouse-gas cuts.
Executives at the summit say firms will be left at a competitive disadvantage if the European Union forces industry to slash emissions while competitors in China and India are given more leeway.
Business Europe, an industry lobby group, has warned against raising the target to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from 20% to 30% unless rival economies also commit themselves to similar targets. China has agreed to cut its emissions per unit of economic output 40% over the next decade, but this is not the same as actually limiting pollution.
“In the absence of a global agreement, the EU must not increase in any way its current carbon-reduction requirement,” said Business Europe.
This has infuriated green-interest groups. Oxfam has called on the CBI to dissociate itself publicly from Business Europe. The CBI said, however, that it agreed with Business Europe’s view. “It may be right to move to a 30% emissions cut, but the challenge is bringing other countries to match that level of ambition,” said the CBI’s Neil Bentley.
Progress in negotiations in the first week of the two-week event was painfully slow.
A draft agreement that proposes cutting global emissions roughly in half by 2050 emerged on Friday, but it contained no detail on the crucial question of how much rich nations would give to poorer countries to help them tackle climate change.
Delegates from developed nations welcomed the draft, but warned that they thought it was too soft on developing countries.
At a separate meeting in Brussels, European leaders agreed to pay $10.5 billion (£6.5 billion) over the next three years to help emerging economies, a move that they said should help to clinch a deal at Copenhagen.
The pace of the talks is expected to pick up this week, when many world leaders, including Gordon Brown and Barack Obama, arrive. The summit concludes on Friday.
Business leaders at the event said they had struggled to exert any influence on the main talks, taking place at the Bella conference centre. Most of the business events at the summit are being held at a separate location, and executives said the business lobby was divided on key issues.
“It’s difficult to imagine one voice [to speak for business],” said Jim Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy, the American utility group. “In truth, there are many voices.”
Global institutions, however, are using the event to try to thrash out side agreements on how business will pay for the shift to low-carbon technology. The World Bank, for example, on Thursday summoned business representatives to a low-profile meeting at a conference room at the Copenhagen opera house.
Businesses also see Copenhagen as a giant trade fair and networking event.
A former American climate-change negotiator who now runs a consultancy that advises firms on how to tap into the £3 trillion global low-carbon technology market said businesses were at the talks to make deals. “Really, this is just a great convention for businesses to meet customers. The policy part is almost a sideshow.”
Money is the barrier to progress in the main talks. Developing countries want the industrialised nations to pay for low-carbon technologies that will help nations such as China and India grow their economies in a sustainable way.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that by 2030 $15 trillion will have to be spent to move from fossil-fuel power to low-carbon sources.
Steve Sawyer, who represents the interests of business on the World Bank’s clean technology fund committee, said business would be responsible for 75%-90% of these costs. The fund was established last year to test low-carbon technologies and act as a demonstration project for the Copenhagen negotiations to show how rich nations could sponsor low-carbon projects in emerging economies.
The fund is now worth $5 billion — nearly equivalent to the entire finance package being offered by the EU delegation in Copenhagen to pay for green energy projects in developing nations. Sawyer said the World Bank’s intention was to use the fund to attract investment from businesses of up to $100 billion over the next decade.
“Whatever comes out of Copenhagen, ultimately it is businesses that will pay most of the costs, but if governments are going to get business to invest then they should be testing these technologies in the markets where they have the most commercial opportunities,” he said.
“We should be investing in projects where it makes economic sense to get these technologies to scale and then give them to developing countries.”
Martin Powell of the London Development Agency, the mayor’s economic development arm, agreed. “The climate-change negotiations shouldn’t just be about giving money to poorer nations. They should be about making the most efficient use of that money,” he said.

Brown and Sarkozy move to fund climate aid with global banking tax

An EU summit in Brussels sought to boost the chances of a deal further by also pledging €2.4bn a year from January
Ian Traynor in Brussels
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 December 2009 16.58 GMT
An international campaign to force the financial sector to pay for saving the planet from global warming was boosted yesterday when France joined Britain in championing a new global regime of so-called Tobin taxes on financial market transactions. The billions in potential proceeds would be earmarked for long-term measures to tackle global warming.
Days before the Copenhagen climate change conference reaches its finale with the arrival of Barack Obama and more than 100 other world leaders, an EU summit in Brussels sought to boost the chances of a deal further by also pledging €2.4bn a year from January in “fast-track” funds to help the world’s poor countries cope with rising seas, floods and famines.
The figure agreed saw Gordon Brown almost double Britain’s pledge from £800m to £1.5bn, apparently making the UK Europe’s single most generous donor.
The figure was higher than expected and part of a broader package from the industrialised countries around the world tipped to total €7bn a year for the next three years.
Financial transfers from rich to poor are a make-or-break issue in Copenhagen and the EU move was described as “hugely encouraging: by the UN climate chief Yvo de Boer. “One of the things that has been holding this process back is lack of clarity on how short-term financial support is going to be provided to developing countries,” he said.
European leaders fear that beyond the short-term funding, there could be gridlock over the scores of billions needed for transfers to the poor countries in the longer-term, condemning Copenhagen to failure, triggering unrest in the developing world and an international crisis.
Amid such fears, the Brussels summit for the first time combined action on climate change with moves to fashion a more stable global financial regime as the response to recession sparked by meltdown in the markets.
The prime minister, Gordon Brown, and French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, jointly spearheaded the campaign after weeks of scrapping between the pair over the allocation of top EU jobs. In a joint statement, they said London and Paris would collaborate on proposals for a new global levy on financial transactions: “To ensure predictable and additional finance to 2020 and beyond, we should make use of innovative financing mechanisms, such as the use of revenues from a global financial transactions tax.”
“Nicolas Sarkozy is one of my best friends. We work closely together on all the major issues,” said Brown standing alongside the French president. “Don’t tell us about the need to get on together,” responded Sarkozy. “It’s years since we’ve seen such entente.”
On Thursday Paris announced it was emulating Chancellor Alistair Darling’s announcement 24 hours earlier of a windfall tax of 50% on bankers’ bonuses of more than £25,000.
Sarkozy stressed yesterday that no country could act alone in imposing such penalties and called on others to join in. “We can only tax them if we tax them both sides of the Channel,” said Sarkozy
The banker-bashing is seen as a popular move to punish those most identified with the financial crash, and who benefited from colossal taxpayer bail-outs. But a bonus tax will not produce fiscal returns that match its political impact.
A global levy on financial transactions, however, would generate vast sums. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany supports the levy and the EU summit of 27 government leaders also voiced tentative support for the policy. In language inserted at the last minute, they “encouraged” the International Monetary Fund to examine the feasibility of the levy.
Brown claimed the credit for initiating the idea and rejected objections it was a non-starter because of opposition from the US Treasury. In order to work, the financial transactions levy would need to be global. Brown, Sarkozy and other European leaders are pushing for the policy to be discussed and refined at international financial meetings in the spring in South Korea.
“People are saying we need a better relationship between the banks and the societies they serve,” said the prime minister. “There has been a growth in support for this idea.”
Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission, said that the scale of the sums involved in paying for climate change is so huge that it is well beyond the scope of traditional national budgets. “You need to look at innovative financing. This is an issue of global governance.”
Brown and Sarkozy reiterated estimates that climate change policies will cost €100bn a year from 2020 in transfers from the rich to the poor worlds. But Obama has told European leaders that he cannot accept the €100bn figure as he would never get it passed in the US Congress.
The EU also emphasised its willingness to cut greenhouse gases by 30% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, if the rest of the world signs up to a sufficiently ambitious package in Copenhagen. The EU is currently committed to 20% cuts by 2020 but Brown told the Guardian this week he favoured the higher target.
While the fast-track fund agreed yesterday was bigger than anticipated, it was unclear where all the money was coming from and whether existing aid budgets would be raided and recycled into climate change money.
Tim Gore, Oxfam’s EU climate change policy adviser, said: “EU leaders only offered small sums of short-term cash. Worst of all, this money is not even new — it’s made up of a recycling of past promises, and payments that have already been made.”
Brown appeared to concede that some of the short-term funding would be diverted from aid and development budgets, but added that in the medium-term “we don’t want this to be at the expense of our international development goals.”

Russia Demands Its Credits

Moscow, to Keep Its Carbon Permits, Threatens to Block a Global Climate Deal

By GUY CHAZAN and JACOB GRONHOLT-PEDERSEN
A Russian demand that it keep its huge surplus of emissions permits after they expire in 2012 is overshadowing global climate talks now under way in Copenhagen, with some observers saying it could hamper efforts to reach a deal and upset the global carbon market.
Russia has warned it could reject any deal from Copenhagen that doesn’t allow it to carry forward the unused carbon permits it holds as a result of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Those who argue against letting Russia keep the credits say Moscow could end up selling them abroad, leading to a collapse in the price of carbon.

That in turn could hurt efforts to green the world’s economy. One principle behind promoting an international system of carbon credits — the currency for buying and selling the right to pollute — is that the price of carbon should be high enough to encourage investment in nonfossil-fuel technology such as nuclear, wind and solar.
In a bid to reassure leaders meeting at Copenhagen, Alexander Bedritsky, an adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, said Russia had no plans to sell its unspent permits abroad. But he stressed that Russia would endorse a global deal only if it allowed Moscow to bank its permits.
Observers say Moscow hasn’t decided what to do about the surplus. “There is a chance that Russia could relinquish the permits if it will help the talks,” says Vladimir Slivyak, head of Ecodefense, a Russian environmental group. “The authorities would like to be seen as saving Copenhagen if the talks get into trouble.” He noted that Mr. Medvedev was due to join world leaders at the summit next week. Previously, Mr. Medvedev had said he would stay away.
The dispute dates to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, the first international treaty obliging countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases. Under Kyoto, a country that has difficulty meeting its emissions goal can buy credits from another country that has reduced them beyond its target.

Russia was required by Kyoto to maintain its carbon-dioxide output at 1990 levels, rather than cut them. But in the aftermath of the Soviet breakup in 1991 and Russia’s subsequent economic collapse, its emissions plummeted, and it easily exceeded its Kyoto targets.
That left it with a surplus of carbon allowances equivalent to six gigatons of carbon dioxide, or roughly the same as China’s annual emissions. In theory, Russia could sell the stockpile to other countries — a potential multibillion-dollar bonanza.
The fate of the allowances is unclear once Kyoto expires in 2012. Russia wants them carried forward, in recognition of its achievement in cutting its CO2 volumes, which it says have fallen by 34% since 1990.
Mr. Bedritsky said Russia wasn’t ready to curb its economic growth for the sake of reducing emissions.
Write to Guy Chazan at guy.chazan@wsj.com

From the Inbox: Copenhagen

Gore talks of climate change crisis in shadow of Copenhagen talks

Al Gore talks about climate change with John Roberts on Good Morning America on CNN.

UN chief voices concern over health of Saharawi activist on hunger strike

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has held talks with the Foreign Minister of Morocco to voice his “grave” concern over an independence activist from Western Sahara who has been on hunger strike since last month.

968 Detained at Climate Change Demonstrations in Copenhagen

968 detained at climate rally urging bold pact

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

COPENHAGEN – Tens of thousands of protesters have marched through the chilly Danish capital and nearly 1,000 were detained in a mass rally to demand an ambitious global climate pact, just as talks hit a snag over rich nations’ demands on China and other emerging economies.

The mostly peaceful demonstrations in Copenhagen on Saturday provided the centerpiece of a day of global climate activism stretching from Europe to Asia. Police assigned extra officers to watch protesters marching toward the suburban conference center to demand that leaders act now to fight climate change.

Police estimated their numbers at 40,000, while organizers said as many as 100,000 had joined the march from downtown Copenhagen. It ended with protesters holding aloft candles and torches as they swarmed by night outside the Bella Center where the 192-nation U.N. climate conference is being held.

There have been a couple of minor protests over the past week, but Saturday’s was by far the largest.

Police said they rounded up 968 people in a preventive action against a group of youth activists at the tail end of the demonstration. Officers in riot gear moved in when some of the activists, masking their faces, threw cobblestones through the windows of the former stock exchange and Foreign Ministry buildings.

A police officer received minor injuries when he was hit by a rock thrown from the group and one protester was injured by fireworks, police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch said.

Earlier, police said they had detained 19 people, mainly for breaking Denmark’s strict laws against carrying pocket knives or wearing masks during demonstrations.

At the talks, the European Union, Japan and Australia joined the U.S. in criticizing a draft global warming pact that says major developing nations must rein in greenhouse gases, but only if they have outside financing. Rich nations want to require developing nations to limit emissions, with or without financial help.

Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, representing the 27-nation EU, told The Associated Press that “there has been a growing understanding that there must be commitments to actions by emerging economies as well.”

He said those commitments “must be binding, in the sense that states are standing behind their commitments.”

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said his country — the world’s No. 5 greenhouse gas polluter — will not offer more than its current pledge to slow its growth rate of emissions. It has offered to cut greenhouse gases measured against production by 20 to 25 percent by 2020.

“National interest trumps everything else,” Ramesh told the AP. “Whatever I have to do, I’ve said in my Parliament. We’ll engage them (the U.S. and China). I’m not here to make new offers.”

China has made voluntary commitments to rein in its carbon emissions but doesn’t want to be bound by international law to do so. In China’s view, the U.S. and other rich countries have a heavy historical responsibility to cut emissions and any climate deal in Copenhagen should take into account a country’s level of development.

Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the AP that rich nations are trying to re-negotiate the deal they reached two years ago on the island of Bali, calling on developing nations to limit emissions with financial help.

“It’s going to blow up in their faces,” he said. “The rich countries are trying to move the goal posts. And developing countries are not going to agree to that, no matter how loudly the rich countries demand it.”

The tightly focused negotiating text was meant to lay out the crunch themes for environment ministers to wrestle with as they prepare for a summit of some 110 heads of state and government at the end of next week.

U.S. delegate Jonathan Pershing said the draft failed to address the contentious issue of carbon emissions by emerging economies.

“The current draft didn’t work in terms of where it is headed,” Pershing said in the plenary, supported by the European Union, Japan and Norway.

But the EU also directed criticism at the U.S., insisting it could make greater commitments to push the talks forward without stretching the legislation pending in Congress. Both the U.S. and China should be legally bound to keep whatever promises they make, Carlgren said.

Thousands also marched in a “Walk Against Warming” in major cities across Australia and about 200 Filipino activists staged a festive rally in Manila to mark the Global Day of Action on climate change. Dozens of Indonesian environmental activists rallied in front of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.

Environmentalists staged stunts and protests in 100 piazzas across Italy, from Venice’s St. Mark’s Square to a historical piazza in downtown Rome. They carried banners that read “Stop the Planet’s Fever” and asked passers-by to sign a petition calling on world leaders to reach a deal to reduce emissions.

In Copenhagen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate, and Greenpeace leader Kumi Naidoo were among those ratcheting up the pressure for a fair, ambitious and binding treaty.

Naidoo exhorted politicians to act bravely by crafting a fair, ambitious and binding treaty, so they can later “look their children and grandchildren in the eyes” and tell them they did the right thing. “Failure to do so will be the worst political crime that they would have committed,” he said.

At a candlelight vigil on the conference grounds, Tutu compared the mass demonstrations outside to other popular movements that made a mark in history.

“We want to remind you that they marched in Berlin and the wall fell,” Tutu said. “They marched in Cape Town and apartheid fell. They marched in Copenhagen and we are going to get a real deal.”

Demonstrators chanted and carried banners reading “Demand Climate Justice,” “The World Wants a Real Deal” and “There is No Planet B,” navigating for miles along city streets and over bridges past officers in riot gear, police dogs and the flashing lights of dozens of police vans.

Inside the Bella Center, delegates gathered around flat-screen TVs showing both the larger peaceful rally and the police crackdown on the young activists. Riot police tied them up with plastic cuffs and made them sit down on a closed-off street before busing them to a detention center set up for the climate conference.

Britain’s Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, said dealmakers have a long ways to go. “There are difficult issues to overcome,” he said, “around emissions, around finance, and around transparency and they are all issues we need to tackle in the coming days.”

But the climate conference president, Connie Hedegaard, sought to reassure people that world leaders have come to seriously confront climate change.

“It has taken years to build up the pressure … that we’re also seeing unfolding today in many capitals around the world,” Hedegaard said. “And I believe that that has contributed to making the political price for not delivering in Copenhagen so high.”
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Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen, Karl Ritter and Arthur Max contributed to this report.
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