UN climate talks in limbo as rifts among countries remain

Chilean Environment Minister and chair of COP25 Carolina Schmidt, sitting 2nd left, take part at the COP25 climate talks congress in Madrid, Spain, on December 14, 2019.

Countries remain deadlocked in talks over combating climate change as UN talks drag on beyond the official deadline.

Officials from almost 200 countries met early on December 14 to examine new texts drafted overnight.

Many nations and observers said the latest versions risked backtracking on existing commitments made in the 2015 Paris climate accord and didn’t reflect the urgent warnings from scientists that greenhouse gas emissions need to fall sharply, and soon.

Chile’s environment minister, Carolina Schmidt, who is chairing the two-week talks in Madrid, urged countries to recognize the “overall balance” of the latest drafts and called on officials to “show the outside world that we deliver, that multilateralism works.”