Reply #12: Boston Globe article about the trip

[Mass]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/12/10/kerry_says_talks_on_climate_must_remain_on_track/

WASHINGTON - Senator John Kerry, who leaves today for international climate talks in Poznan, Poland, says that the outgoing Bush administration and the economic crisis facing the country should not impede progress toward negotiating a new international global warming agreement in Copenhagen next year.

"We need to keep it on track, we need to make sure that the slow pace of the administration doesn't downgrade people's sense of possibility," he said in an interview in his office on Monday, as he prepared to join a congressional delegation at the Poznan talks today.

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Kerry is not going to Poznan as a negotiator but rather as incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which would eventually have to approve any international treaty.

"It is critical, absolutely essential, that the United States show its bona fides on this issue and others immediately," he added.

In the interview, Kerry said the US must commit to mandatory emission reductions. A critical question is how much: Environmentalists are calling for reductions of 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, which the International Panel on Climate Change has said is necessary to keep global temperatures from rising more than 3.5 degrees - the tipping-point temperature change the panel said would cause significant environmental and societal destruction.