What We’re Reading 12/18/09

Dec 18th, 2009 11:23 AM UTC
By Virginia Simmons

The Guardian—Copenhagen climate summit: World leaders work into small hours to forge face-saving text:
President Obama told leaders of 193 nations at the climate talks in Copenhagen that their collective will to address global warming “hangs in the balance” and urged both developed and developing countries to accept an agreement he acknowledged was far from perfect. “The time for talk is over,” he said, adding that it is crucial “to hold each other accountable” for commitments. The administration provided the talks with a boost on Thursday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the United States would contribute its share of $100 billion a year in long-term financing to help poor nations adapt to climate change. Today, Western leaders pointed to China’s resistance to international monitoring as a major stumbling block to hammering out an agreement.

NY Times—Obama Presses China for Accountability on Climate:
World leaders and negotiators in Copenhagen are expected to work until moments before the official signing ceremony today to try to produce a document that could be cast as the operational agreement leaders had promised to produce at the summit. The Guardian reports that the initial agreement text, drafted by a select group of 28 leaders in the early hours of this morning, proposes extending negotiations for another year until the next scheduled UN meeting on climate change in Mexico City in December 2010.

Christian Science Monitor—Clinton promises aid to poor nations – but China may resist:
After Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement that the United States would take part in efforts to pull together long-term financing for developing countries to the tune of $100 billion a year by 2020, the U.S. and others insist that China is now the key player. By including verification as a condition for helping to marshal aid, the United States could set China up as the villain, write the Christian Science Monitor, that ultimately prevents U.S. participation in the long-term aid effort.

Financial Times—The old world order is melting away (column by Andrew Ward):
A column in the Financial Times argues that the Copenhagen conference is unlike any international conference before it—and could mark the start of a new multi-polar, more chaotic world. Western diplomats and journalists have grown used to international summits, with strictly limited guest lists and carefully stage-managed outcomes. Copenhagen, with 45,000 registered participants from nearly 200 countries, could hardly be more different. Hitherto peripheral powers, such as many African nations, have attracted as many reporters to their daily press conferences as the US and European Union. They are reveling in their newfound role as swing voters between the west and big emerging economies such as China and India.

The Hill—Raj Shah and America’s Development Future (op-ed by Bill Frist):
Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist writes in Roll Call that Dr. Rajiv Shah, the nominee for administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, must be confirmed without delay for three key reasons. “First, successful outcomes to our most pressing national security challenges depend just as much on our ability to provide health services and economic opportunity to struggling people as on our combat operations or diplomatic efforts.  Second, the global fights against HIV/AIDS and other deadly diseases have reached a turning point. Third, the Obama administration and bipartisan Congressional leaders are in the midst of a transformative debate about how to make U.S. foreign assistance more effective and accountable.”

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