Asian Leaders Sign Vague Climate Pact

[hatrack]

Source: Reuters

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Leaders of 16 Asian countries, including top polluters China and Japan, agreed to a vague pact on climate change on Wednesday, trying to put aside discord over Myanmar's suppression of democracy protests.

In the declaration signed in Singapore, leaders of the East Asia Summit (EAS) committed to stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the long run.

But the pact, which contains no fixed targets on cutting emissions or even limiting their growth by a specific date, would serve as a basis for climate change negotiations at a major U.N. meeting next month in Bali.

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Asked why the declaration did not include any numerical targets, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: "This is a declaration of intent, not a negotiated treaty of what we are going to do to restrict ourselves."

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Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071121/pl_nm/asean_dc_12;_ylt=AlgSJqoUU_Szbviqa6tNpeJrAlMA

[Teaser]

1. oh good, that's sure to help.

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[Warren Stupidity]

2. Where the Washington Consensus remains dominant

there will be no real action on catastrophic climate change. The neocon/neolib regimes will do nothing: they can't as they are entirely subservient to the global corporate elites, to a world view where next quarter's profits are the major consideration in all policy initiatives. Where a more democratic-socialist perspective remains a political force, such as 'old europe' and the emerging new democratic socialist nations of latin america, policies determined by considerations other than immediate profit are at least possible, and certainly the western european nations have at least tried to act on this issue, but without global cooperation of all of the major nations, progress is not really possible. Basically, as things stand now, we are screwn, nothing much is going to be done, we are plunging off this cliff and the folks in charge really don't give a damn.