MORE THAN 100 heads of state or government, including US president Barack Obama, are to attend the UN climate change summit, which opens today in Copenhagen.
Up to 34,000 people from 192 countries have indicated that they will be at the conference, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, British prime minister Gordon Brown and Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
“It’s the biggest show on Earth today, and it must be a success,” said Michael Zammit Cutajar, chairman of a key ad hoc working group. “The time is up for governments to deliver strong commitments,” added UN climate chief Yvo de Boer.
Mr Obama’s decision to attend the final day of the talks on December 18th, instead of flying in on Wednesday before going to Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize, is seen as an indication that a “political agreement” is likely to be reached.
“After months of diplomatic activity, there is progress being made towards a meaningful Copenhagen accord in which all countries pledge to take action against the global threat of climate change,” the White House said in a statement.
Mr Obama decided to switch the date of his visit after EU sources and environmentalists expressed surprise at the initial plan, noting that most of the hard bargaining would take place in the last few days.
Oxfam’s climate policy adviser Antonio Hill also welcomed the change, saying Mr Obama “will now be in the right place, at the right time with the right people, reinvigorating the US approach to the climate talks at this defining moment in history.” The summit is taking place against the backdrop of a Nielsen/Oxford University survey of 27,000 internet users in 54 countries, which found that the number “very concerned” about climate change had fallen from 41 to 37 per cent since 2007.
Nielsen found that the number of Americans saying they were “very concerned” had fallen from 34 to just 25 per cent – indicating that Mr Obama faces a tough task in selling any deal.
Meanwhile, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which incorporates the work of up to 3,000 scientists worldwide, has rejected sceptics’ claims that the case for human influence on global warming has been overstated.
Responding to the controversy over leaked e-mails at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, which cast doubt on the credibility of its data, the IPCC said it stood by its findings that evidence for global warming is "unequivocal". – ( Additional reporting by Reuters)