Telegraph: Copenhagen climate summit: Gordon Brown ‘has Plan B’ to beat US and China deadlock
The Prime Minister spoke as the Copenhagen climate conference teetered on the brink of collapse amid a row between China and the US.
After almost two weeks of talks aimed at curbing global warming, world leaders were still deadlocked late on Friday over how to cut their economies’ carbon emissions.
Some were preparing for another, unscheduled day of talks on Saturday but other leaders, including Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, said they would leave the Danish capital on Friday night.
A row between China and the US, the world’s two largest emitters, effectively paralysed the summit.
China rejected American calls for its emissions to be independently monitored, and was also resisting plans for a worldwide agreement to halve emissions by 2050.
As the talks dragged on into the night, the Prime Minister conceded that the dispute between Washington and Beijing could kill the Copenhagen search for a global deal.
“If we cannot reach an agreement, it would be right for me and others to put forward proposals about how we move forward,” he said.
“If we do not succeed in getting agreement, I will have other proposals about how to proceed.”
Sources said that the alternative plan could see countries who continued to object being effectively excluded from a slimmed down Copenhagen Accord calling for carbon emissions to be halved by 2050 and a $100 billion-a-year fund to help poor countries adapt their economies to emit less.