UN talks hear pleas for global warming fight

MONTREAL - Host Canada urged a broader fight against global warming at the start of UN talks which include the United States, which has pulled out of the main UN environmental accord.

"Let us set our sights on a more effective, more inclusive long-term approach to climate change," Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion told the opening of the 189-nation conference in Montreal lasting until December 9.

"More action is required now," Dion told delegates at the talks, likely to involve up to 10,000 representatives of governments, environmental groups and businesses in working out how to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels.

The talks will start mapping out what to do after the UN's Kyoto Protocol, a first step by about 40 industrial nations to curb emissions, runs out in 2012.

While Dion did not mention Washington by name, both the United States, the world's biggest polluter, and Australia have pulled out of Kyoto, denouncing its caps on emissions as an economic straitjacket. Many delegates fear that any successor to Kyoto will be ineffective without Washington.

The opening session included actors and video images showing the risks of a changing climate -- including more frequent hurricanes, ice storms, desertification, locust swarms, forest fires, floods and melting ice caps.

"We know that climate change is the single most important environmental issue facing the world today. ... The longer we wait the larger will be the challenge," Dion said. Finding a successor to Kyoto is likely to take several years.

Apart from the United States and Australia, Kyoto excludes poor nations, like China and India, from the first set of targets until 2012. They are left out because their emissions are far lower per capita than those of industrial nations.

"Time is running out," environmental group Greenpeace said in a statement marking the start of the talks.

"We have an enormous task in front of us," said Argentine Environment Minister Gines Gonzalez Garcia, urging intensified worldwide efforts against climate change.

He said that big nations had to take the lead and "significantly reduce" their emissions -- a path rejected by Washington which favors big investments in new technology rather than mandatory Kyoto-style caps.

Kyoto nations are meant to cut their emissions by 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Washington has said that it has no plans to rejoin UN schemes beyond 2012.

However, other delegations noted that US President George W Bush signed a declaration at the Group of Eight nations in Scotland in July promising action at the UN talks in Canada.

Referring to Montreal, the G8 leaders said: "We are committed to move forward in that forum (Montreal) the global discussion on long-term co-operative action to address climate change."

The 10 hottest years since records began in the 1860s have been since 1990 and most scientists blame rising temperatures on a build-up of greenhouse gases from carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

Dion is due to be stay on as president of the talks even though Canada's minority Liberal government looks set to lose a vote of confidence that will trigger an election.

The meeting includes both the 156 nations which have ratified Kyoto and a total of 189 countries, including the United States, which back the wider UN climate convention.

- REUTERS