Resumen de Who should pay for climate disasters?
To a casual observer of the latest round of climate talks in Warsaw, Poland, last week, it was a battle between Polish coal miners set on keeping their jobs and the people of the Philippines, trying to keep afloat after tempests worsened by climate change. In the corridors, the focus was different: it was another stage in the agonizingly slow crawl towards a global deal on carbon emissions that diplomats hope to seal in 2015. Little progress was made on most issues. But the two-week United Nations negotiations did end with an outline agreement that could one day allow victims of natural disasters shown to be exacerbated by climate change to sue coal-mining firms and power companies for compensation. The deal was still being hammered out on Saturday--a day after the talks were due to close. After compromises from all sides the negotiators agreed to set up an "international mechanism to provide most vulnerable populations with better protection against loss and damage caused by extreme weather." It was a tacit acceptance that the pledges made at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 to prevent "dangerous climate change" have failed.
