News | Climate Change

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091201/sc_afp/unclimatewarmingmexico

AFP/File – During crunch talks in Copenhagen next week, Mexico will propose to slash its greenhouse gas emissions …
MEXICO CITY (AFP) – During crunch talks in Copenhagen next week, Mexico will propose to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050 so long as it receives international aid, officials said Tuesday.
The second-largest economy in Latin America after Brazil also aims to reduce emissions from the heat-trapping gases by six to seven percent by 2012 "if we have the necessary technology and financing," Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada told reporters.
"If we had the budget, international aid, technological support, we could immediately do a lot more. But this is all we can do for now."
He called the goals "voluntary."
Mexico has received between 350 and 450 million dollars each year in foreign aid since 2007, the bulk of it from the United States, for its environmental programs targeting global warming, according to the Environment Ministry.
"We cannot agree to any binding situation so long as developed countries have not done so," the minister added.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon is expected to attend the United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen, held December 7-18, which are seeking to clinch a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol before it expires in 2012.
The minister said he was more confident the summit would reach such an agreement now that the world's two biggest polluters, China and the United States, have announced emissions targets.