Could Carbon Tariffs Kill Copenhagen?

What's killing Copenhagen?

Well, probably not, but as Bloomberg reports, developed and developing countries are still at loggerheads over the controversial issue:

China is demanding that a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases prohibit nations from imposing trade sanctions, further pitting the world’s No. 1 emitter against U.S. lawmakers.

The draft accord from a meeting in Copenhagen to forge a climate treaty bars rich nations from adopting trade actions tied to global warming. China said such language will avert “trade wars.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sides with China.

“We will always oppose any practice of establishing trade barriers under the guise of protecting the global environment,” Yu Qingtai, China’s climate change ambassador, said in an interview....

[T]rade is emerging as a central issue dividing developed and developing countries at the United Nations gathering in the Danish capital....

In Copenhagen, the latest version of a proposed treaty includes language banning developed countries from ‘‘resorting’’ to climate-related trade measures is printed in brackets, meaning it lacks consensus agreement and must be dealt with by higher-level negotiators from 193 countries....

Yu said China and other emerging economies simply want outlined in a new treaty what he says already exists in the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the basic climate agreement governing the current talks.

As I noted on Friday, the trade section (paragraph 6) of the first draft Copenhagen text was blank, so it appears that the climate negotiators have made a little progress by at least inserting something there.  However, the brackets make clear that no one has agreed to anything just yet.  (I can't find the latest draft online, can you?) And clearly, the issue of carbon tariffs (aka "border adjustment measures") and eco-protectionism more broadly continue to be a serious roadblock to completing a Copenhagen climate agreement by this Friday.