President-elect tells delegates gathered in L.A. to debate tactics for reducing planet-warming pollution that his administration will help lead way to 'a new era of global cooperation.'

President-elect Barack Obama sent an explicit message Tuesday to international negotiators of a new global warming treaty that, under his administration, the U.S would move to slash its own greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80% by mid-century, and "help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change."

The videotaped message, played to a conference on climate change in Los Angeles, electrified more than 700 delegates from 19 countries gathered to debate strategies for cutting planet-warming pollution.

"It looks as if we're about to have a climate emissions Terminator in Washington," panel moderator Steve Howard, chief executive of the London-based nonprofit the Climate Group, told the conference, which was convened by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Several European countries reportedly approached Obama's transition team to ask that he signal his intentions to diplomats who will gather in Poland next month to craft a successor to the 2005 Kyoto Protocol. Some environmentalists have called publicly on the president-elect to attend the talks, even though the Bush administration will be in charge of the U.S. delegation.

In his message, Obama pledged "a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change . . . that will start with a federal cap and trade system. We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050."

The pledge echoed Obama's campaign positions, but tying them explicitly to the Poland talks "puts wings on the negotiations," said Annie Petsonk, international counsel to the Environmental Defense Fund, a U.S. advocacy group. "It sends a clear message to the international community that the U.S. will back cap and trade..."

Full Story: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-na-climate19-2008nov19,0,277271.story

For more information on this topic or related issues you can search the thousands of archived articles on the OCA website using keywords:

Become an OCA Member! Sign up below: