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Yeutter says don’t expect much out of Copenhagen

The United Nations Climate Change Conference continues in Copenhagen this week, talks fell apart for a while over the weekend when a group of developing nations called the G77/China China block walked out of the talks in objection to the refusal by developed nations to adhere to limits set by the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. Industrialized countries want a completely new agreement while the developing countries want the Kyoto terms to continue. The U.S. never ratified the Kyoto agreement and China and India are classified as “developing” nations in that deal. That does not set well particularly with the European Union. The G77 group returned on Monday but talks were limited to informal discussions.

A number of world leaders including President Obama are scheduled be in Copenhagen by the end of the week with hopes for the announcement of some type of agreement. Former U.S. Trade Ambassador Clayton Yeutter says he doesn’t see anything definitive coming out of Copenhagen nor anything much beyond that. “It will be back on the agenda in Congress in 2010 but that’s an election year. It’s hard to deal with a complex, complicated, difficult, contentious issue like that in an election year so the odds are it will spill over into 2011 and who knows what the political-economic situation will be in 2011.”