US: Funding to deal with climate change should come from private sector

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Technologies needed by developing countries to grapple with climate change will increasingly come from private companies and venture capital, the United States told a key global warming conference Tuesday. On the second day of a two-week convention, the US delegation laid out a position that ran counter to the general drift of the 162-nation meeting. Most delegations see governments and regulatory agencies as playing the key roles in reducing the world's greenhouse gas emissions and helping poor countries cope with the effects of climate change. "There's a lot of money out there, and most of the action is going to be in the private sector," the chief US negotiator Harlan Watson told The Associated Press. "The issue is, how do you direct those financial flows" by giving incentives to low-carbon investments, Watson said in an interview after the US presentation. "But it depends on what the customer wants, and how to set up those incentives." The conflicting approaches, which have plagued climate talks for years, underscore how difficult it will be to reach a new agreement to succeed the first phase of the Kyoto accord, which ends in 2012.