Tuesday, November 17, 2009

South Korea is promising to cut its greenhouse gas emissions voluntarily by 2020, even without a global treaty in place.

Seoul (sohl) today pledged to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases by 4% below 2005 levels by 2020.

The announcement came amid dimming prospects for a new global climate-change pact at next month's U.N. conference in Copenhagen.

Today's voluntary target-setting could put pressure on developed nations to act more aggressively to fight global warming.

South Korea is one of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters. In 2005, the country released 590 million tons of the greenhouse gases.

The Copenhagen agreement is meant to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. rejected Kyoto as economically damaging and unfair since it made no demands of developing nations.