Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought some much need good news to Copenhagen with her. In an announcement this morning, Clinton announced that the United States was ready to join other industrialized nations in mobilizing 100 billion dollars a year in climate aid for developing and vulnerable nations by 2020 at the Climate Change conference.
The issue of long-term financing for developing countries has been one of the major sticking points at the conference. Poor countries, which have done the least to cause climate change, are expected to be the hardest hit by a warming earth, including droughts, severe storms, desertification, floods, and rising sea levels. With Clinton’s announcement it appeared that at least one stumbling block was overcome.
Clinton, however, made it clear that the United States’ support for the 100 billion dollar a year fund is contingent on “all major economies”, most especially China, standing “behind meaningful mitigation actions and [providing] full transparency as to their implementation.”
From the beginning of the conference the United States has been firm that China, and other major rising economies such as India, open their emissions up to international auditing. Already, the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has signaled his support of international monitoring.
Still China has resisted, but if China compromises on this, an agreement may be possible in the waning hours.
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