BRASILIA – President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday Brazil was open to adopting targets for greenhouse gas emissions if rich countries did more to curb climate change.

“Brazil should not be afraid of the challenge,” Lula told Reuters in an interview at the presidential residence in the capital Brasilia.

“That issue is not a taboo for us,” he added, saying that he may attend global climate talks scheduled for the end of this year in Copenhagen.

The U.N. talks comprise almost 200 nations, aiming for a deal to rein in warming that the U.N. Climate Panel says will cause more droughts, floods, crop failures, spread disease and raise sea levels.

Developing countries, however, should not be expected to make the same sharp emissions cuts as rich countries, Lula said.

“Rich countries, which are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, must do their part,” he said, urging all countries to sign the expiring Kyoto protocol on climate change.

“What we can’t accept is people who already have their car, a third television, a third house telling Brazilians to remain poor.”

Brazil relies heavily on clean hydroenergy and has begun to reduce Amazon destruction, which emits carbon as trees burn or decompose. Destruction of the world’s largest rain forest is the main contributor to Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions, which are among the world’s largest.

Last year, Brazil abandoned years of opposition to deforestation targets and said it would reduce Amazon destruction by 50 percent in a decade.

Lula also said he would veto clauses in an Amazon land reform bill that would grant companies and non-residents land titles. The objective of the bill is to legalize land holdings of millions of people who settled in the Amazon in recent decades, but environmentalists have criticized it as a land giveaway that could spur more deforestation.

“We want to be an example to the world in taking care of our own things,” Lula said.

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U.S. Climate Bill, U.N. Pact Seen More Likely In 2010

Timothy Gardner,   12-Jun-09
NEW YORK – The U.S. energy bill may not pass until next year, which could also delay an agreement to extend the Kyoto Protocol on cutting global greenhouse gas emissions until 2010, experts said on Thursday.

“Action in the Senate will be far more difficult than in the House,” Eileen Claussen, president of the Washington-based nonprofit the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told an Environmental Finance conference on Thursday. She said it’s “nowhere near certain” that the bill would come to a Senate vote this year.

Two obstacles stand in the way. First, advocates must convince the public the bill, which might initially raise electricity and other energy prices, will ultimately save money by heading off damage caused by global warming.

The UN’s science panel said global warming could bring killer droughts from higher temperatures, stronger storms, and floods from rising seas as glaciers melt.

One opponent, the Coalition for Affordable American Energy, whose members include the influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce and about 200 other organizations, has estimated climate legislation could cost U.S. households $1,400 per year by 2020.

Claussen said the current U.S. climate bill contains consumer protections that would shield against such price shocks.

Second, experts said the bill must include nuclear energy, which is nearly emissions free but comes with other problems such as toxic waste. Claussen said a resolution on nuclear power could help the Senate reach the required 60 votes for the bill’s passage.

Overcoming the hurdles and passing the bill, especially during a recession, will take time, probably until next year, for lawmakers to work out.

“There is an old saying in politics,” said Steve Corneli, a market and climate policy expert for U.S. power generator NRG Energy, Inc. “When you are explaining, you are losing.”

Without action from the United States, rich and poor countries will remain divided on the climate change issue. The focus in Copenhagen in December might shift from forming a final global agreement to working out a framework of ideas, such as how to bury carbon emissions and finance renewable energy infrastructure. Advocates are encouraged, though, that China and the United States are making enough progress that a global pact should eventually be hashed out.

“I don’t think not reaching an agreement (in 2009) will be particularly dire,” one carbon market broker said.