Obama Prepares for Copenhagen Climate Summit

ABC's Rachel Martin reports: The President heads to Copenhagen for the UN Conference on Climate Change later this week and White House officials are already lowering expectations for what will come out of his visit – and the talks overall. Today in a background briefing for reporters, senior administration officials  characterized the negotiations (ongoing for the past 10 days) as “bumpy” and “often difficult.”
The negotiations focus around one central goal: how to get wealthy, developing and poor countries to commit to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. And once they’ve committed, how to ensure and prove that they’re making the necessary cuts. In advance of his trip to Copenhagen, President Obama held a conference call today with with French President Nicolas Sarkosy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to discuss the talks and their collective goals.
China hold a lot of cards in the climate talks and while Chinese negotiators have suggested that they will commit to lower emissions, they have refused to concede to any kind of international verification protocol.  White House officials say in order to reach a deal, all parties have to commit to “full transparency.” When asked if US negotiators how much direct progress has been achieved in the last week and a half during the Copenhagen conference, a senior administration official said, the progress “has been in clarifying these specific points of difference and honing in on them in order to bridge gaps. We are now trying to figure out of if the gaps can be bridged.” In other words – not much.