Times of India , Friday, December 14, 2007

Correspondent : Staff Reporter

NUSA DUA, INDONESIA: Al Gore on Thursday delivered a rousing call for the world to take strong action to fight climate change without the United States, accusing his country of scuttling a key UN conference in Bali. With exhausted negotiators fighting against the clock over a draft text, the former US vice president who was awarded the Nobel peace prize this week for his environmental activism urged tough commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Gore, who narrowly lost to President George W. Bush in 2000, told a packed conference room on the Indonesian island that he was no longer in office and "not bound by diplomatic niceties." "So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth," said Gore, referring to the climate film that won him an Oscar. "My own country, the United States is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that," he said to loud applause. "But my country is not the only one that can take steps to ensure that we move forward from Bali with progress and with hope." Environment ministers or their stand-ins from more than 180 countries have until Friday to agree a framework for tackling global warming past 2012, when pledges under the Kyoto Protocol expire. Hailing growing local efforts in the United States to fight global warming, Gore urged the conference to be hopeful that the next president who succeeds Bush in 2009 will take action. "You can feel anger and frustration, and direct it at the United States of America. Or you can make a second choice, you can decide to move forward and do all of the difficult work that needs to be done and save a large open blank space in your document and put a footnote by it that says this document is incomplete." "Over the next two years, the United States is going to be somewhere it isn't right now. You must anticipate that," he said. In a nearly hour-long address, Gore likened the Earth to a planet with a fever and urged the delegates not to be remembered as the generation that let the North Pole melt. "You ought to feel a sense of exhilaration that we are the people alive at a moment in history when we can all the difference. That's who you are," said Gore, sweating as his voice rose. Despite Gore's impassioned intervention, delegates were mostly consumed by the much drier work of finishing a declaration before the 11-day-old conference closes Friday. The European Union, backed by developing countries, wants a reference by industrialised countries that a cut of 25-40 percent in their emissions by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, will be a guideline for future talks. The EU, angered by what it sees as US-led efforts to water down the final text, warned it would snub climate talks called by Bush next month in Hawaii if the Bali meeting collapsed. "If we would have a failure in Bali, it would be meaningless to have the major economies meeting," said Humberto Rosa, secretary of state for the environment from EU president Portugal. The United States is opposed to the 25-40 figures, and delegates say its position is also shared by Japan, Canada and Russia. James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, rejected blame, saying: "Every country has a negotiating position, not just the US." "We will lead, the US will lead, and we will continue to lead, but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow." EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas expressed particular disappointment that Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who signed the Kyoto Protocol as his first act in office and headed to the Bali talks, had not backed the text on the 25-40-percent cut. "But still there is time because otherwise the Kyoto signing, which we applauded, will not have the substance that we expect from Australia," he said. Rudd's signing of the Kyoto Protocol left the United States as the only nation to shun the environmental treaty. In a report issued this year, the IPCC predicted that by 2100 global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 C and 6.4 C (1.98 and 11.52 F) compared to 1980-99 levels, stoked by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels. More powerful storms, droughts, floods and rising sea levels are among the risks that will escalate in coming decades, threatening hunger and homelessness for millions, it said.

SOURCE : Times of India, Friday, 14 December 2007