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POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 12, 2008 (AFP) -- The way is "now clear" to sign a global climate agreement in 2009, helped greatly by the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president, Nobel-winning green activist Al Gore said on Friday.

"I would like to relay a message that I heard from the people of the United States of America this year that I think is very relevant to the task the world is facing over this next year: 'Yes we can.'," Gore said to a standing ovation on the final day of U.N. climate talks in Poznan, Poland.

Gore said that before coming to Poznan he had held a meeting with Obama in Chicago at which the president-elect had assured him that climate change would be a "top priority of his administration."

Obama "emphasised that once he is president the United States will once again engage in these negotiations and help lead toward a successful conclusion," Gore said.

He read out several public statements on climate change from Obama and said: "Do not discount these words."

Delegates in Poznan are hoping that Obama, who takes office on January 20, will be a breath of fresh air when it comes to international climate talks after eight years of the outgoing president George W. Bush.

Obama has said he wants the United States to commit to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80 percent in 2050, mainly through a 150-billion dollar, 10-year programme to develop renewable forms of energy.

Some 11,000 participants from more than 190 countries have gathered in Poznan to lay the groundwork for a treaty agreement to sharply reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that drive global warming.

The deal is to be signed and sealed in Copenhagen by the end of 2009, but progress has been excruciatingly slow, in part because the United States under Bush turned it back on the Kyoto Protocol.

"I think the road to Copenhagen is now clear," Gore said.

The former U.S. vice president said that reaching an accord was a matter of survival for the planet.

"Our home, Earth, is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is of course not the planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings," he said.

Halting global warming was not just a political imperative, he added, but a moral issue, and world leaders must step up over the coming year and play a more active role.

"It is time, between now and the gathering in Copenhagen, for heads of state to become personally involved in meeting several times," he said.

On Thursday, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Poznan that he was considering convening a summit on climate change during the next U.N. General Assembly session that begins in September 2009.

Negotiations among the 192-member U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are mid-way through a two-year "roadmap" set down on the Indonesian island of Bali last year.

The envisioned Copenhagen treaty will amount to an action plan for curbing greenhouse gases and channelling help for vulnerable countries beyond 2012, when current provisions expire under the Kyoto Protocol.

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

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BRUSSELS, Dec. 12, 2008 (AFP) -- E.U. leaders agreed Friday on a landmark package to slash greenhouse gas emissions, urging incoming U.S. president Barack Obama to follow their lead in the fight against global warming.

But environmentalists promptly slammed the agreement, complaining too many concessions had been made to reach a deal. Industry representatives meanwhile warned of possible closures and job losses.

"It is quite historic what has happened here," French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a press conference at the conclusion of a two-day E.U. summit in Brussels.

"No continent has given itself such binding rules that we have adopted with unanimity," added Sarkozy, who chaired the gathering as head of the French E.U. presidency.

The E.U.'s climate-energy package, the "20-20-20" deal, would decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, make 20 percent energy savings, and bring renewable energy sources up to 20 percent of total energy use.

Sarkozy denied that the targets had been watered down during the negotiations with fellow E.U. leaders who feared the package would hit energy and jobs as recession bites.

"The objectives remain the same," said Sarkozy. "No way can the (economic) crisis be used as an excuse not to move on the environment."

But Greenpeace, WWF, and other environmental groups denounced the agreement as "a dark day for European climate policy."

"European heads of state and government have reneged on their promises and turned their backs on global efforts to fight climate change," they said in a joint statement.

They accused the German, Italian, and Polish leaders plus Sarkozy of choosing "private profits of polluting industry over the will of European citizens, the future of their children and the plight of millions of people around the world."

The green groups called on the European Parliament, which must also approve the deal, to "amend the worst parts."

Industry, while appreciating the last-minute concessions, said the plans could still result in job losses and the dreaded "carbon leakage" whereby industry moves out of highly regulated regions.

"The risks of carbon leakage are still there," said Axel Eggert, spokesman for Eurofer, the European iron and steel federation.

The European Commission estimates that the project will cost some 100 billion euros over the period up to 2020, though pointing out the emissions trading system by which  polluting permits will be auctioned, will generate much more.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the agreement showed that the 27-nation bloc was serious about tackling global warming.

The European Union is keen to be seen at the forefront of the battle against climate change, and wants to arrive at international climate change talks in Copenhagen in a year with a model for the rest of the world.

Barroso said Obama's election offered a chance for a joint effort between Europe and the world's biggest economy to combat global warming.

"We are asking him to join Europe and with us lead this global effort," he said. "Our message to our global partners is this one: 'Yes you can. Yes you can also do what we are doing. Yes you can achieve the targets that we have committed ourselves to achieve'."

U.S. Senator John Kerry, Obama's pointman at U.N. environment talks in Poznan, Poland, called the E.U. climate pact "an enormous act of leadership" that blazes a path for the entire world.

Under the agreed scheme each nation and each sector of industry have been given their own targets on emissions reductions.

The national targets range from cuts of up to 20 percent in greenhouse gas emissions while for the less advanced eastern European nations emissions are allowed to rise by up to 20 percent by 2020.

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

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POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 11, 2008 (AFP) -- Global warming rivals the Iraq War as the policy for which George W. Bush has been most savaged, with critics accusing him of braking or even sabotaging efforts to tackle climate change.

But the chief U.S. delegate at the U.N. climate talks here, in an interview on Wednesday, said Bush's administration had shown "an evolution" over two terms and had made practical contributions in shaping the global debate.

Paula Dobriansky, under secretary for democracy and global affairs, told AFP she had no regrets for Bush's strategy on climate change but argued a better job could have been done in articulating it to the public.

"I think this issue (climate change) is important, we care about it greatly. Looking back, if there was anything that maybe I would have hoped, it's that we could have done a more effective job in getting our message out, in other words, (in) public diplomacy," she said.

She added: "President Bush said very early on in his administration, 'we will act, we will learn and we will act again.' And our approach has been an evolutionary one. I think you have seen an evolution from the beginning of the administration to the present time."

Dobriansky did not spell what she meant by an evolution. But, in defending the administration's record, she chose to stress its shift towards multilateral action, which became prominent in the final years of Bush's tenure.

This apparent change of tack saw talks launched with Asian countries and major carbon emitters, initiatives to boost the transfer of clean technology, and mustering finance to tackle climate change.

Bush has been a bogeyman to greens ever since he announced in March 2001, in one of his first decisions in office, that he would never ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the cornerstone of attempts to deal with climate change under the U.N. flag.

Bush argued Kyoto's curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions were too costly for the U.S. economy and unfair because the binding targets only apply to industrialised countries, not to China, India and other emerging giants.

The walkout nearly wrecked Kyoto, whose framework had been designed in 1997 largely to accommodate American needs.

Anger towards Bush boiled over, especially in Europe. For many analysts, it became a landmark in the loss of U.S. "soft power," or diplomatic clout.

Kyoto was saved after it was championed by the European Union, but the effort to negotiate a successor, after the treaty's provisions expire run out in 2012, remains deeply troubled.

Even though the United States remains an active participant of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto's parent forum, progress has been dogged by entrenched suspicions of Bush and Washington's continued opposition to emissions "caps" -- a stance that President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to erase.

Dobriansky argued that, beneath the headlines, the United States had made "substantial contributions" in several practical ways.

These include placing the focus on beefing up funds to help poor countries cope with climate change and gathering major emitters in a smaller forum that was linked to the U.N. talks -- an initiative that many analysts also say has been a success.

Developing countries remain fiercely opposed to having binding targets on emissions.

But, suggested Dobriansky, Bush's argument that these big emitters of tomorrow have "measurable, verifiable, reportable" forms of emission control was making headway.

While the Bush administration has been blasted as selfish and unilateralist on climate, Dobriansky paid tribute to the global process.

"This is a global issue, it requires global action and it also requires global give and take and exchange of information and assistance, so from that end, I think the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change is an appropriate and important forum."

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

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POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 10, 2008 (AFP) -- U.N. talks on crafting a new climate change treaty inched forward on Wednesday, with delegates hoping the E.U. would spur the process by approving its own pact at a crunch summit.

The conference in the Polish city of Poznan, gathering more than 11,600 participants from around the world, reaches a climax on Thursday with the

Some 150 environment ministers and top government officials were expected, as well as U.N. head Ban Ki-moon and U.S. senators John Kerry and Amy Klobuchar -- two figures seen as the eyes and ears of president-elect Barack Obama.

Negotiations among the 192-members U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are mid-way through a two-year "roadmap" set down on the Indonesian island of Bali last year.

They are aiming for a deal in Copenhagen in December 2009 for a far-reaching pact that would roll back the peril of global warming. It would take effect from 2012, when provisions expire under the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol.

This is proving a tall order, with the complex discussions in Poznan centered on how to share out the commitments and costs of cutting the carbon pollution that stokes global warming.

Rich countries acknowledge their historic role in pushing up global temperatures but they say emerging powers like China and India must also take action.

Developing and poorer nations hit back with the argument that the industrialised world should lead by example, and foot the bill for clean-energy technology and coping with the impact of global warming. "It is going slow. But at this stage, there is some progress." South Africa's minister of environment and tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, told

Negotiators agreed that by next June they would whittle down a 100-page document, stuffed with hundreds of sometimes conflicting proposals, into a workable blueprint for action beyond 2012, said a U.N. source. "It's quite significant," the source said.

Pressure group Greenpeace complained that the talks were becoming bogged down and, in a large banner hung above the entrance to Poznan train station, urged ministers to "get serious."

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said activists wearing eyeball costumes would greet ministers as they arrived, demonstrating the world is "eagerly observing the negotiations and expects constructive conclusions."

France's climate ambassador Brice Lalonde said hopes of a breakthrough at Poznan had always been misplaced.

"Poznan was never going to be a conference where a spectacular outcome was to be expected," Lalonde told reporters. "We hope for a spectacular outcome in Copenhagen next year."

But delegates also wondered how the Bali "roadmap" will look after an E.U. summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday that will aim to hammer out an accord over Europe's climate plan.

The E.U., credited with salvaging the Kyoto Protocol after the United States refused to ratify it in 2001, has championed demands for a tough post-2012 pact.

Its programme sets down the most ambitious goals of any advanced economy, including 20 percent less greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, increased use of renewable energy sources and overall energy savings. But a major sticking point is the plan to require industry to start buying its polluting rights via auction, raising objections from economic powerhouse Germany and coal-heavy eastern Europe countries like Poland.

"You can see the U.S. and China moving (on climate change). We will destroy or undermine that movement if we go flaky in Europe now," leading economist Nicholas Stern, author of a landmark 2006 report on climate change, said in Poznan on Tuesday.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters on Wednesday that the E.U. risked losing its vanguard role and giving the impression it was "no longer serious" on climate change if no deal was struck in Brussels.

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

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PARIS, Dec. 8, 2008 (AFP) -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told U.N. delegates locked in climate talks Monday that the world economic crisis should not slow down the fight against global warming.

"There are some people who say that we can't afford the fight against global warming while our economies are down, but the exact opposite is true," he told some 10,000 delegates in Poznan, Poland in a video message.

"The green rules and regulations that will help save our planet will also revive our economies," he said.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is charged with hammering out for a new global climate pact by the end of next year.

"There is far more economic risk in the status quo -- wasting energy, burning fossil fuels and destroying forests -- than there is in fighting climate change by developing clean, renewable energy and saving forests," the governor said.

Schwarzenegger announced he would attend the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen next December, the deadline set for reaching a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, whose provisions expire in 2012.

"States and provinces have long been at the forefront of developing green technologies and protecting our economy so that they are setting great examples for our federal counterparts," he said.

Thirty-two other U.S. states had already forged their own plans to reduce the greenhouse gases that drive global warming.

If it were a country California would be the world's fifth largest economy and 12th biggest emitter of carbon dioxide.

Though a Republican, like President George W. Bush, Schwarzenegger has aggressively sought to implement measures in the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol that Bush rejected shortly after taking office.

This week, California is finalising work on climate legislation aimed at cutting state emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 -- the same goal targeted by the European Union.

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

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POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 8, 2008 (AFP) -- With slim results so far, U.N. climate talks in Poland enter the home stretch this week haunted by Europe's splintering resolve over its own climate package and the void created by a lame-duck negotiating team from the United States.

Some 10,000 delegates return Tuesday from a two-day break to lay the groundwork for a new global climate pact slated for completion in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Things will shift into high gear with the arrival Thursday of government ministers from more than 150 countries, but the meeting is still likely to spill past its scheduled Friday closure, organisers said.

The urgency of slashing greenhouse gases is not contested: U.N. scientists have warned that the failure to do so would unleash dreadful consequences for large swathes of humanity within a matter of decades.

But the highly technical negotiations have stalled over how to distribute the commitments and costs of cutting carbon pollution.

Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), rich countries acknowledge their historical role in pushing up global temperatures, but say rapidly emerging economies -- including major CO2 emitters such as China and India -- must also take quantifiable action.

Developing and poorer nations argue the industrialised world should lead by example, and foot the bill for clean-energy technology and coping with global warming's inevitable impacts.

Attempts to construct a climate pact have been made even more difficult by the global economic crisis.

Key to progress thus far has been the E.U.'s ambitious plan to cut CO2 output by 20 percent -- using 1990 as a benchmark -- before 2020, and by 30 percent if others follow suit.

The 27-nation bloc is also shooting, by the same date, for a 20 percent increase in energy efficiency and a 20 percent market share for renewables in the energy sector.

But the plan -- slated for approval at an E.U. summit at week's end -- has run into stiff resistance from East bloc countries which rely on heavily-polluting coal-fired plants for energy and are demanding concessions.

Even Germany, which spearheaded the E.U.-wide pact, has recently said its energy-intensive auto and cement industries should be given extra time before being forced to pay for polluting rights.

"If the E.U. fails to adopt an ambitious package, then its credibility -- when it asks for commitments from others -- will be weakened," commented a non-E.U. negotiator from Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a good part of her cabinet will hold talks in Warsaw Tuesday, with climate high on the agenda.

A hastily convened climate summit Saturday in Poland between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and leaders from nine East European nations failed to smooth over differences.

"We are at a complicated moment," Brice Lalonde, France's climate ambassador, told AFP.

Despite the oft-repeated mantra that the financial crisis will not block progress, "everyone knows that there is going to be less money on the table over the next two years," he said.

The infighting within Europe has already taken a toll on the larger climate debate, some observers said.

"We don't see the same political leadership we saw last year," said Hans Verolme, a consultant for Climate Action Network, a U.S.-based environmental group. "The E.U. is often simply absent."

Others are looking to the United States to give the process a boost, encouraged by the arrival of President-elect Barack Obama.

But on the ground in Poznan, the United States in still represented by the outgoing administration of George W. Bush, which dealt a nearly fatal blow to climate talks when it ditched the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.

Still, some seasoned negotiators here are confident that Europe will come through -- "even if it is at the last minute," in the words of the non-E.U. European delegate.

"We all have big expectations of the E.U.. But I am convinced that the E.U. is going to solve these internal problems and reaffirm its leadership on the climate issue," he said.

"The problem right now is more a lack of ideas -- nobody has clear ideas."

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

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POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 5, 2008 (AFP) -- The U.N. climate chief said Friday that talk of pushing a global climate change deal past the December 2009 deadline agreed upon at U.N. talks in Bali last year was not on the table.

"I find that kind of thinking is neither helpful nor necessary," Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said half way through two-week international negotiations in Poznan, Poland.

Some experts have suggested that a lame-duck administration in Washington and the global economic crisis may have put the already ambitious goal of hammering out a global climate change agreement by December 2009 out of reach.

"There was a broad international commitment in Bali -- including from the Bush administration -- that we are working towards an outcome in Copenhagen," de Boer said, referring to the Danish capital that will host the critical round of U.N. negotiations. "I have no indication whatsoever that president-elect Obama wants to go back on what President Bush agreed to in Bali."

But Obama is represented only by observers in Poznan, where the U.S. delegation is led by members of the outgoing administration of George W. Bush.

In a press conference in Poznan, de Boer also took a swipe at a U.S.-based think tank cited in a question as raising doubts about how realistic the U.N. goal was.

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change "are about the only ones I've heard saying that a deal for Copenhagen is not viable," he said. A draft study by an analyst on the Center's website states that "a detailed post-2012 agreement is unlikely when governments meet in late 2009 in Copenhagen."

The Bali "road map" laid out at the end of marathon negotiations last year set December 2009 as the deadline for a new climate deal that will kick in after the first round of rich-nation commitments under the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

The Bush administration has been hostile to all efforts to impose binding agreement on emissions reductions unless rapidly developing nations such as China and India took on commitments too.

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

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POZNAN, Poland, Dec 5, 2008 (AFP) - Developing countries most at risk from climate change expressed frustration halfway through a two-week U.N. climate conference that rich countries had not made stronger commitments on cutting greenhouse gases.

More than 10,000 delegates from 192 nations are gathered in Poznan, Poland, to draft a new international climate change treaty, slated for completion by December next year.

The global economic crisis has made already delicate negotiations more difficult.

Many developed nations have shown signs of wavering on earlier promises to slash carbon emissions.

Developing and poorer nations -- including major carbon polluters such as China and India -- say the industrialized world should lead by example, and must help them pay for clean-energy technology and the inevitable impacts of global warming.

The Poznan meeting aims to lay the groundwork for a "shared vision" on how to broaden the fight against climate change after the first round of rich-nation commitments under the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.

But the debate so far looks more like trench warfare, say delegates and observers, and is reminiscent of the old north-south divide that once animated debate over international relations.

"Developing countries have expressed their frustration regarding the still low ambitions of the industrialized countries," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"They would have preferred that rich nations show the way," said the normally upbeat de Boer, whose role is something akin to a conductor trying to get musicians to play off the same score.

To keep the impacts of global warming manageable, highly industrialized nations -- especially the United States, Japan, and the E.U. -- should cut their own greenhouse-gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent before 2020, compared to 1990 levels, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in a report last year.

"On Thursday, China called -- quite forcefully -- for a firm commitment right here in Poznan on a range (of emissions reductions) for 2020, even before (U.S. president-elect Barack) Obama takes office" on January 20, said one European observer.

"This kind of aggressive attitude will not be acceptable for the United States, which has always insisted that commitments by industrialized countries must be accompanied by significant efforts from developing ones," he said.

At the UNFCCC talks in Bali last December, developing economies that are also major carbon polluters were invited to slash emissions in a "significant" manner.

The IPCC has suggested how that might translate into hard numbers: slowing CO2 output by 15 to 30 percent by 2020.

"It's not a demand so far," Artur Runge Metzger, a representative of the European Commission, the E.U.'s executive body, said Monday.

But the European Union did manage to annoy a large number of developing countries in Poznan this week by asking the IPCC to explain its calculations.

The E.U., meanwhile, is struggling to pass the action plan that would allow it to meet its own goal of cutting emissions by 20 percent before 2020.

Some members -- notably Italy and Poland -- are balking at the measures, and major industries have threatened to relocate.

"We don't see the same political leadership we saw last year," said Hans Verolme, a consultant for Climate Action Network, a U.S.-based environmental group. "The E.U. is often simply absent."

For Pierre Radanne, a member of the French delegation and a veteran of climate negotiations going back to 1992, the anger of developing countries is "on the whole legitimate."

"After all, they have seen almost nothing since the beginning -- industrialized countries made commitments (in Kyoto), but more than half of them have not kept them," he told AFP.

Nor has it gone unnoticed that rich nations that had been reluctant to invest in the developing nations' fight against climate change suddenly coughed up hundreds of billions to save their own banks, he said.

The problem, he added, is that now those investments truly are harder to come by.

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

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