US offers $100 bn bribe to developing countries

In a desperate last minute bit to salve something from the wreckage of COP 15, Hillary Clinton has sinalled that the US will back a climate change fund to transfer $100 bn to developing countries, provided that nations like China permit independent verification of emissions:

Ms. Clinton, in essence, offered a bribe. The United States would support (though only partly pay for) a $100-billion (U.S.) fund to fight climate change in the developing world if developing countries – she singled out China – were to allow the independent verification of their emissions.

Vice-foreign minister He Yafei said China is ready for “dialogue and co-operation that is not intrusive, that would not infringe on China’s sovereignty,” The Associated Press reported. And the White House said Mr. Obama will hold talks Friday with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

Funding for the developing world was one of the key issues still dividing climate-change negotiators and environment ministers Thursday night, only hours before the heads of state and government of 119 countries were due to sign a sweeping emissions agreement to limit the planet’s average temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees. A leaked United Nations document suggested that dangerously higher temperatures were likely, based on the reductions pledged so far.

A range of other issues remained unresolved. They included precise emissions-reduction pledges by 2020; the launch of a three-year, $30-billion (U.S.) Fast Start fund that would precede the larger fund; and whether the Kyoto Protocol, the existing, and only, legally binding international climate treaty, would disappear in a cloud of carbon dioxide, be extended beyond its 2012 expiry date or be replaced by an agreement that covers all countries, not just the industrialized world.

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