Hard Choices on Climate Can Wait for Next President, Aides Indicate

While part of the debate here focused on how industrialized nations will address their carbon emissions over the next several years, negotiators were also exploring how to incorporate major emitters from the developing world and the world's most vulnerable nations in the next agreement. China, for instance, is asking industrialized countries to provide more money to ease the transfer of clean energy technology overseas, while poor nations whose deforestation is accelerating global warming are seeking financial compensation for protecting their remaining forests.

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While the United States endorses both of these goals in principle, it has balked at specifying how much money developed countries should contribute to such efforts.

Blairo Borges Maggi, governor of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, said regions like his need "an insurance policy" to ensure that the 20 percent of Brazil's forests that are unprotected will remain standing.

"It seems like it's a proposal that everyone likes in theory, but in practice, when it's time to put your hand in your pocket, nobody wants to," said Borges Maggi, shoving his hand in his pants pocket as if to pull out money.

David Waskow, of the humanitarian group Oxfam America, said U.S. resistance to articulating how much money industrialized nations could provide to help poor nations adapt to a warming world is "in subtle ways, creating trouble for that global deal. . . . If this deal is going to come together, these concerns about equity have to be addressed."

David Doniger, climate center policy director at the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, said if the administration succeeds in deferring specifics about curbing emissions until early 2009, negotiators might still be able to forge an agreement that year to follow the Kyoto agreement, which expires in 2012, but it would be hard.

"It can be done," he said. "But it's going to be a very busy year."

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who came to the Bali talks for a day-and-a-half this week, said he believes that the administration wants "a document that keeps the process moving," but that delegates are looking for more concrete leadership from nations such as the United States and China.

"There's a question mark of how long is it going to take the bigfoots to step forward and do what they need to do, or will that happen in 2009 with the right leader?" Kerry said. "You need to believe in this issue. You can't just do it on the side because it's an obligation that somebody throws at you. This has to become a crusade, a passion, a monumental undertaking."