'Danish Text' Sends Copenhagen Climate Summit Into Disarray

A proposal dubbed the "Danish Text" caused outrage and dissention when it was leaked to The Guardian during day two of the major climate summit taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, this week. The document -- in which the United States, United Kingdom, and Denmark were supposedly involved -- proposed shifting the authority behind climate regulation from the United Nations to the more financially minded World Bank, a plan that angered developing countries.

Representatives of African non-government organizations burst into angry chants over the document on Tuesday afternoon, Politico reported. The authors, who prepared it in secret, said it was only a draft and had not get been introduced for debate and amendments. They said that it would have been altered significantly before ever being voted on.

As Daniel Stone of Newsweek explains, the plan outlined in the text reverses a central principle of the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 emissions agreement that mandated sweeping cuts for developed countries while giving developing nations more leeway. Instead of placing the heaviest burden for emissions cuts on technologically advanced countries, the Danish Text places its strictest limits on poor countries. (Developed countries would be allowed 2.67 tons of carbon emissions per capita, while poorer countries would be limited to 1.44 tons.)

"It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the U.N. process," said one diplomat quoted in The Guardian.

"This is only a draft but it highlights the risk that when the big countries come together, the small ones get hurting," said Antonio Hill, climate policy adviser for the environmental group Oxfam International. "On every count the emission cuts need to be scaled up. It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed."

Briefing reporters Tuesday evening in Copenhagen, U.S. delegate Jonathan Pershing downplayed the implications of the document. "There is no single Danish text, there are many Danish texts." He went on, "If there was no Danish text, I would be appalled" since "[the delegates'] job is to bring something to the table."