US, Europe disagree on legal force of international climate pact

Leaders from the United States and the European Union are at odds over whether an upcoming international climate pact should be legally binding.

The United States wants some parts of next year’s agreement to be legally binding, but it wants countries to set their own greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

{mosads}But the top EU official at a United Nations conference on the agreement this week in Lima, Peru, said that would not be acceptable.

“The EU is of the mind that legally binding mitigation targets are the only way to provide the necessary long-term signal, the necessary confidence to the investors … and provide credibility in the low carbon transition worldwide,” said Elina Bardram, head of the EU delegation at the conference, according to the Guardian.

“We’re not convinced that an alternative approach could provide the same signals that would be sufficient to deliver the global momentum,” she said.

Its the first time the EU has publicly disagreed with the U.S. stance on the issue.

U.S. officials were unavailable to respond, the Guardian reported.

One advantage to the U.S. of a non-binding agreement is that the Senate may not have to ratify it as a treaty.

But Asad Rehman of Friends of the Earth accused U.S. leaders of advocating for a “Wild West” situation in which countries are free to police their own climate rules with no international enforcement, the Guardian said.