UN climate science head hopes for more US action

By executive action, the Obama administration can boost the US target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions beyond levels envisioned in legislation working its way through Congress, the head of the UN climate science network said Sunday.

AP/Michael von Bülow

"There is scope for going above what is going to be legislated," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told The Associated Press on the eve of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

Senate and House bills capping carbon dioxide emissions would reduce them by 17 to 20 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. Compared with 1990 levels, the standard UN benchmark, that's only a three-four percent reduction, experts calculate, a contribution far short of what scientists say is needed among industrial countries to avoid dangerous climate change.

"I think this is a beginning and we can still go several miles beyond this," Pachauri said, but "I think the first challenge for the United States is to get this legislation through the Senate."

The IPCC head said he hopes other nations, too, will raise their emission-reduction pledges.

"I also believe that Copenhagen will not be the final word," Pachauri said.