Reuters The world is forecast to grow hotter, sea levels to rise, intense weather to wreak even more destruction and the new deal struck by governments in Durban to cut greenhouse gas emissions will do little to lessen that damage. Climate data from UN agencies indicates that the accumulation of heat-trapping gases will rise to such levels over the next eight years — before the newly agreed regime of cuts in emissions is supposed to be in place — that the planet is on a collision course with permanent environmental change. Countries around the globe agreed on Sunday to forge a new deal forcing all the biggest polluters for the first time to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. But critics said the plan was too timid to slow global warming. For a reduction plan to have a major impact, analysts say, the world's largest emitter, China, needs to be weaned from coal-intensive power sources that are choking the planet with carbon dioxide (CO2) and developed countries must spend heavily to change the mix of sources from which they draw their energy. But they see little political will to implement these costly plans and argue that the UN process showed, in two weeks of talks in the South African city of Durban, that it is bloated, broken and largely incapable of effecting sweeping change. “The challenge is that we begin the talks from the lowest common denominator of every party's aspirations,” said Jennifer Haverkamp, director of the international climate program for Environmental Defense Fund, a US group which campaigns against pollution. “For this effort to be successful, countries need to be ambitious in their commitments and to refuse to use these negotiations as just another stalling tool,” she said. Domestic political constraints make it unlikely that pledges in Durban for more green projects in the developed world and stepped up aid for developing countries will come to fruition given problems for government funding in Europe, the United States and Japan. __
