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Figueres, 57, is responsible for guiding more than 190 member-states in a UN-led initiative to draft an international treaty to fight global warming. The goal is to sign in 2015 a treaty that will take effect in 2020, replacing the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997. Kyoto, the only international treaty on emissions restrictions, limits greenhouse pollutants in industrialized nations and leaves poorer countries to make voluntary commitments. Canada pulled out of the treaty in 2011 and Russia and Japan have rejected new targets after 2012. The U.S. never ratified it. The treaty has applied to less than 15 percent of global emissions. (Zip)(In the U.S., the divided Congress is politicizing climate change and slowing down efforts to pass legislation, Figueres said.) President Barack Obama’s administration is expected to finalize this year new limits on power-plant emissions, a move that may help meet a pledge to reduce greenhouse gases 17 percent by 2020, It’s unclear whether the power-plant rules and other efforts by Obama to address climate change will translate into a more ambitious pledge for the post-2020 period. Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, told reporters at the Warsaw talks that U.S. agencies are already working to develop the new pledge. The U.S. plans to offer it in the first quarter of 2015, ahead of the December 2015 climate conference in Paris.
