Global Climate Pact ‘Unrealistic,’ Former U.S. Officials Say - BusinessWeek

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- A single, legally binding global climate treaty is impossible to craft and the United Nations should give up trying, focusing instead on a series of measures to reduce global warming, two former U.S. State Department officials said.

Tim Wirth and Eileen Claussen, who worked on the UN climate talks in the 1990s, said legislation to cap fossil fuel emissions in the U.S. won’t happen in the coming years, and without U.S. action other countries won’t follow.

“It’s completely unrealistic to continue talking about a single, overarching treaty at least for the next 15 or 20 years,” said Wirth, who was lead U.S. negotiator at the Kyoto Climate Conference in 1997.