Just a few days after United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon reiterated the need for a “green new deal” across nations to tackle climate change, he criticized the efforts of the United States, citing Congress’ climate change bill as not going far enough to prevent global warming. Quoted in Reuters, Ban applauded American efforts to reduce emissions, but stated that the government could do more. Ban spoke specifically about the goal to cut greenhouse gases 17 percent by 2020.

“That’s clearly lower than other countries are now aiming, particularly the European Union,” Ban said on the fringes of a climate change and business conference in Copenhagen. “I appreciate President Obama and his administration taking an active role. Now we need to continue to encourage the United States to do more,” he said, adding that he welcomed the vote by the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee.

Responding to the Secretary General’s comments, an American representative to the climate change talks in Copenhagen disputed that the United States isn’t doing enough in the fight against global warming.

“I don’t think it’s correct to say that Europe is proposing a lot and the United States little,” Todd Stern, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, told Tuesday’s edition of the French daily Le Monde. “If you look at things from the point of view of the progress that each nation will have to make to reach its objectives, the U.S. level of effort is probably equal, or superior, to that of Europe,” Stern said.

All of this is prelude to the big climate change talks that will take place in December, and it may be that nations are already jockeying for the title of “greenest” in order to deflect calls from developing nations that those countries already industrialized fully make deeper cuts in emissions. Let’s just hope that these opening volleys don’t result in a gridlock that prevents a new accord from being reached. In international relations terms, there’s a lifetime between now and December.

photo credit: World Economic Forum’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons