UN climate talks progress, EU and China spar

BANGKOK, May 3 (Reuters) UN talks on ways to fight climate change are on track to approve a blueprint for governments tomorrow, but major differences are still being thrashed out, delegates say.

Arguments about the costs of curbing emission of greenhouse gases and stabilising levels of the gases in the atmosphere are among the more contentious issues and talks could go down to the final minutes at the meeting in Bangkok, they said.

Two delegates Reuters spoke to on condition of anonymity were confident a document would be agreed by tomorrow.

''There's no mood here to cause anything destructive,'' one said after talks dragged on until the early hours of today, when another long day of talks was expected.

''Some countries are being difficult and we don't know how difficult until we come to the final moment,'' he said.

Scientists and government officials from more than 100 countries began the meeting on Monday to discuss the report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), the third to be released this year.

The previous two painted a grim future, with global warming causing more hunger, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas and said it was at least 90 per cent certain mankind was to blame.

A draft of the latest report estimates that stabilising greenhouse gas emissions will cost between 0.2 per cent and 3.0 per cent of world gross domestic product by 2030, depending on the stiffness of curbs on rising emissions of greenhouse gases.

For example, by 2030, the costs of letting greenhouse gas concentrations rise to 650 ppmv (parts per million volume) of carbon dioxide-equivalent are 0.2 percent of global gross domestic product, it says.

The lowest level of 445 ppmv would be the most costly and arguably impossible to achieve given the rapid increase in greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, agriculture and mining.

Current concentrations are now at about 430 ppmv of CO2-equivalent and rising sharply.

EU-CHINA RIFT One of the main issues in Bangkok, the delegates said, was a rift between Europe and China.

The European Union, which has already set a target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 per cent cut by 2020, says curbing emissions will not cost that much.

But China objects to any language that suggests a cap on emissions or stabilisation levels that could leave it vulnerable to demands in future climate talks to slow its rapid economic growth or spend vast sums on cleaner technology.

China was not going to accept any statement that implied it could not develop as it wished, one of the delegates said.

''Basically, what is happening is that the Europeans want to say it costs nothing and lots of other people want to emphasise the notion that it costs something. It's about as simple as that,'' he said.

Europe wanted a paragraph to back a British government report by Nicholas Stern last year that said doing nothing about climate change could cost world economies up to 20 per cent of GDP, while the cost of government action was one per cent, he added.

''China is implacably opposed to that,'' the delegate said.

The other delegate said no particular stabilisation target had been set in the talks. But the European Union says a 2 C rise is a threshold for ''dangerous'' changes to the climate system, implyig a fairly minimal rise in greenhouse gas concentrations.

''The EU wants a long way below 550 ppm. China is somehow wanting to exclude information about the low scenarios and others are too,'' the delegate said.

Reuters SZ GC1018