In a last-minute turn in global climate talks, international negotiators agreed over the weekend to adopt more ambitious plans than expected to trim government subsidies to oil companies worldwide, part of a broader effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Initial plans called for each of the 20 industrialized and emerging nations attending G-20 to take “voluntary” measures to cut production and consumption incentives. But privately under pressure from the Obama administration, the group now is preparing to sign an agreement that omits the word “voluntary.”
In any version, a summit communique has little real force of its own and is effective only according to how strictly nations decide to abide by its tenets.
Although not binding, the wording is significant to the parties, both as a reflection of the commitment of the world leaders and for its power to shape future conversations.
Two newspapers in India ran headlines last week repeating the charge that the US reaction to the Gulf Coast disaster, which has killed 11 people, and to Bhopal, where at least 15,000 died as a result of exposure to toxic gases leaking from a US-owned pesticide plant, was evidence of double standards.
There was little doubt that most of those closest to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired by President Obama Wednesday, would leave with him – partly in a show of solidarity and partly because the new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, would not request their services.
