In Copenhagen South Africa described as "one of the stars of the negotiations"

All countries together should emit no more than 44 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2020 to avoid the worst consequences of a warming world, the report said.

Computing the high end of all commitments publicly announced so far, the report said emissions will total some 46 billion tons annually in 2020. Emissions today are about 47 billion tons.

SHOOT: South Africa are still saying emissions will increase 42% over the next 15 years. That's more like a promise to increase emissions than to curb them. Get real.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, said on the eve of the 192-nation conference that despite unprecedented unity and concessions, industrial countries and emerging nations need to dig deeper. "Time is up," de Boer said. "Over the next two weeks governments have to deliver." South Africa on Sunday became the latest country to announce an emissions target. It said over the next 10 years it would reduce emissions by 34 percent from "business as usual," the level they would reach under ordinary circumstances. By 2025 that figure would peak at 42 percent, effectively leveling off and thereafter begin to decline. "This makes South Africa one of the stars of the negotiations," said the environmental group Greenpeace. "Never in the 17 years of climate negotiations have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together," de Boer said. "It's simply unprecedented." Obama said he would commit to an emissions cut of 17 percent from 2005