Christian Aid says US must be 'named and shamed' at climate conference

Christian Aid warned this week that the time is coming for UK and EU countries to "name and shame" the United States for what it calls its "blatant attempts to derail any meaningful international agreement on climate change".

Currently, environment ministers from around the world are attending a UN conference in Bali in an attempt to find a 'roadmap' to prevent climate catastrophe.

According to Christian Aid the representatives from the US made comments which reveal "that their only aim is to obstruct any plan that will require significant action by the rich nations that are overwhelmingly responsible for global warming".

Andrew Pendleton, senior climate change policy analyst for Christian Aid, said, "If European ministers are serious about tackling climate change, then the days when they can stand discreetly by while the United States shamelessly wrecks the negotiations by rejecting any mention of clear and binding targets for reductions in rich countries' greenhouse gas emissions are numbered."

Pendleton said the UK Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, should be ready to expose the US for acting in an irresponsible and short-sighted way. Benn, he said, should speak up for the world's poor who are in desperate need of Britain's moral leadership.

He described Bali as an opportunity for governments to act together to stop a climate catastrophe by seeing each country taking responsibility for its own contribution to climate change.

He said, "After a year of calamitous disaster, in which the lives of many of the least responsible people have been claimed by ever more ferocious weather, in which scientists have spelled things out clearly enough for a three-year-old to comprehend and in which business is saying that it needs a clear, ambitious agreement, Christian Aid fears that the politicians are poised to fail horribly.

"This [failure] appears to be what the United States is actually working for. If the UK and the rest of the EU want a different outcome at Bali, then they must work to isolate the US and to support their Indonesian conference hosts."

The Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the conference that without the participation of the US, any climate change agreement would not be effective.