Key upbeat on Copenhagen talks

John Key is hopeful New Zealand could get progress on forestry. Photo / NZ Listener

Prime Minister John Key heads to climate talks in Copenhagen tomorrow confident progress can be made.

Mr Key did not originally plan to attend the United Nations talks, describing them as a photo opportunity but as pressure built on leaders to make the talks count Mr Key decided to step up.

Today he said while there were varying views on climate change most New Zealanders should understand the value in his participation.

"The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) legislation and climate change polarises people. There's one group that will always believe the Government isn't doing nearly enough; there's another group that says 'this is madness why are we doing anything' and there's a big group in the middle going 'I am not quite sure what this is about but yeah maybe the Government should do something'," he said on TVNZ's Breakfast programme.

"To all of those groups, all three, I would argue probably it makes sense for me to be there because actually it's important we don't get signed up to something that we don't agree with and we also get to put our case.

"Our case is really specific, we are an unusual set up, we've got a developing country profile, very high emissions coming from agriculture, for a developed country. We are also on the hook to put in some money so let's just make sure we don't get over-committed there."

He was hopeful New Zealand could get progress on forestry and advance its initiative to drive more research into reducing emissions from agriculture.

Over the weekend at the talks over 1000 protesters were arrested while on Sunday more than 90 ministers met informally, on their day off from official negotiations between 190 nations.

The talks aimed to try to break an impasse over who is responsible for emissions cuts, how deep they should be, and who should pay for them.

Countries like China and India say the industrialised world must make bigger cuts in emissions and help poor nations to fund a shift to greener growth and adapt to a warmer world.

Richer countries say the developing world's carbon emissions are growing so fast it must sign up for curbs in emissions to prevent dangerous levels of warming.

The talks will culminate in a summit on Thursday and Friday that United States President Barack Obama will attend, adding to the pressure on negotiators to reach a deal.

Mr Key was optimistic progress could be made.

"I am actually confident we will get a high level political agreement and I think that will leave us more work in 2010 to tie up the pieces," he said on Newstalk ZB.

"It was always going to be difficult and that's why the enormous text that was prepared prior... was set aside and why the political focus has come on because that's the only progress that's going to be made."

Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons was also confident an agreement would be reached.

"I do know that you don't get 100 world leaders coming to a conference where they expect to get no deal. They would all end up looking very silly," she told Radio New Zealand.

"So there will be some kind of deal by the end of the week, the question is I suppose will it be a fair one and whether it will be ambitious enough for the climate."

She said failure would be a deal that did not include targets or dates. She said New Zealand's conditional target of reducing climate harming emissions to 10-20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 was below the target range being considered.

"I think New Zealand is getting further and further outside the consensus that's building at the conference."

She said another problem for New Zealand was a focus on making savings domestically not via buying credits.

- NZPA