U.S. eyes shifts on climate payments, in possible breakthrough at summit

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — The struggle to reach a new global agreement on climate change took a significant turn as the United States showed openness to making payments to nations suffering irreversible damage from the planet’s warming, negotiators at the U.N. summit here told POLITICO.

The U.S. helped draft a proposal that calls for supplying such payments to developing countries, U.K. and European officials said late Friday night as text of a potential agreement circulated to reporters in this town on the Red Sea. Negotiations in the nearly two-week-long summit are continuing Saturday, a day after the original deadline.

Many details of the plan would still need to be worked out, including the exact mix of public and private funding that could go into a pot of money meant to help countries cope with the losses inflicted by climate change.

The proposal may still fail to satisfy critics from developing countries who say the U.S. is continuing to shirk its responsibility for all the greenhouse gases it has pumped into the atmosphere since the 19th century. Another potential sticking point is the U.S. insistence that China — now the world’s top carbon polluter — must be among the countries opening their wallets.