Cancun Update: U.S. Delegation Press Briefing 2

Posted on 02. Dec, 2010 by astark in U.S.A.

Head of U.S. delegation Jonathan Pershing gave a second press briefing yesterday afternoon. Notable highlights included Pershing’s note that the U.S. has not yet held a bilateral meeting with Chinese counterparts but expects to meet with them today. He had “no comment” on the Japanese statement earlier that Japan will not inscribe its emissions reduction commitments under a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. In response to a question about Indian Minister Rameesh’s compromise proposal on MRV, Pershing said that “we are just now getting into the formal discussions, or I should say the informal discussions on these detailed questions… coming in, it was quite clear that we were converging. But we’ve not yet reached agreement. And the next ten days will determine whether or not we can reach that agreement.”

Finally, on mitigation commitments, Pershing confirmed the commitments that “the President has also made and we continue to affirm the commitment that we made in Copenhagen last year. We are not moving away from that, that is a public statement that we stand behind. Clearly the next steps for implementing that are going to have to go through Congress, through regulation, through executive order; we will work on all of those tracks, all of those avenues at home to implement those programs and meet that commitment.”

A transcript of the briefing is available here.

Tags: Cancún, Jonathan Pershing, UNFCCC, United States, USA