Key says frustration growing at Copenhagen 

Source: ReutersUN Climate Change Conference

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The Prime Minister says there is a high level of frustration at the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen.

John Key, in a speech given to a relatively empty conference room, has urged leaders to push for agreement on a new UN pact aimed at averting dangerous climate change.

But in an interview he has suggested the bar needs to be set lower if progress was to be made.

The talks have suffered severe setbacks and were deadlocked for 24 hours until Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen dropped plans to present his own compromise texts.

In an attempt to kick-start the talks, the United States pledged to help mobilise $US100 billion a year by 2020 to assist poor nations.

However, it refused to move on its low emissions reduction target of 17% below 2005 levels over the next decade, equating to about 3 below the 1990 benchmark used by the UN.

New Zealand's conditional target for reducing climate harming emissions is to reach 10-20% below 1990 levels by 2020.

In his speech, Key said New Zealand had come to the table with a "great hope" for a binding agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

"It is sobering to have reached this point of the conference without having made progress on the major issues necessary for a comprehensive, effective and legally binding global climate change agreement."

He called on major economies to show leadership, saying New Zealand was acutely aware of the danger climate change posed for its Pacific island neighbours and big powers needed to consider the plight of vulnerable nations.

"A clear and firm signal must be sent to the world. We must change attitudes, drive low-carbon development, spur innovation and deployment of technologies, and influence priorities for finance and investment."

"Progress will require commitment, compromise and cash," he said.

"But now is the time for us all to face the reality: that of all the options on the table at Copenhagen, failure is the one we can all least afford."

New Zealand was committed to playing its part, Key said, citing its emissions trading scheme while also pushing New Zealand concerns around forests and agricultural emissions' rules and arguing against constraints on the carbon market.

"The wrong rules could significantly undermine New Zealand's future as a food producer to the world for no environmental gain."

Key later told Radio New Zealand it is too soon to give up on a deal.

"I think it's fair to say at the moment there's a lot of frustration here as I arrived in Copenhagen, some real concern that this might all fall over and we may get no progress at all, but I think it's far too early to write it off. With the leaders just arriving it may well be that we can resuscitate things."

He says the US move is a positive.

"Certainly the offer from the United States, which essentially matches what the European Union put on the table from 2020, is a positive step because it's quite clear in the last couple of week very little progress so far has been made at Copenhagen," he says.

"We have around about 24 hours to go, it will be a very important 24 hours if we are to resuscitate negotiations here and get a deal at Copenhagen."

Former prime minister Helen Clark told ONE News there is one last chance.

"I feel that 113 world leaders don't get on a plane to come and be associated with a failure, so leaders I think, are just going to have to pish that extra inch".

Green Party reaction

Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says New Zealand faces pressure to commit to a higher emissions reduction target if other countries do so.

Fitzsimons told Radio New Zealand  on Friday that progress on the troubled talks now hinged on the United States.

She hoped President Barack Obama would be making an announcement about a higher target tonight NZ time or tomorrow.

"Let us hope that in that situation, despite what he said in the House last week, John Key will also step up and do a stronger target," she says.

The last of the world leaders, including US President Barack Obama, are due at the summit later on Friday.