Plan adopted to negotiate global warming pact

BALI, Indonesia -- Two weeks of international climate talks marked by bitter disagreements and angry accusations culminated Saturday in a last-minute U.S. compromise and an agreement to adopt a blueprint for fighting global warming by 2009.

Now comes the hard part.

Delegates from nearly 190 nations must fix goals for industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions while helping developing countries cut their own emissions and adapt to rising temperatures.

Those gathering on the resort island of Bali were charged with launching negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. What they decide in the next two years will help determine how much the world warms in the decades to come.

Despite an aggressive EU-led campaign to include specific emissions reduction targets for industrial nations -- using the figures and time table above -- the final road map has none.

Head of the U.S. delegation Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky confers with an aide during the U.N. Climate Change Conference Saturday Dec. 15, 2007, in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia. The U.N. climate conference adopted a plan to negotiate a new global warming pact by 2009 after the United States suddenly reversed its opposition Saturday to changes proposed by developing nations. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

The guidelines were eliminated after the U.S., joined by Japan and others, argued that targets should come at the end of the two-year negotiations, not the start.

But it was a separate issue that precipitated a final-hour floor fight.

India sought to amend the document to strengthen requirements for richer nations to help poorer with technology to limit emissions and adapt to climate change's impacts.

The head of the U.S. delegation, undersecretary of state Paula J. Dobriansky, objected, setting off loud, long boos in the hall.

Delegate after delegate took aim at the United States, with South Africa saying Dobriansky's intervention was "most unwelcome and without any basis," and Uganda saying "We would like to beg them" to relent.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the U.N. Climate Change Conference Saturday Dec. 15, 2007, in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia. Ban praised the United States for showing "flexibility" after delegates approved a "roadmap" for negotiating a new global warming pact, but warned the most difficult work lay ahead. (AP Photo/Ed Wray)

Then the delegate from Papua New Guinea leaned into his microphone.

"We seek your leadership," Kevin Conrad said. "But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way."

The U.N. climate conference exploded with applause, the U.S. delegation backed down, and the way was cleared Saturday for adoption of the "Bali Roadmap."

When talks begin, the focus again will fall on the United States, the only major industrial country that did not accept Kyoto. That pact requires 37 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gases by a relatively modest 5 percent on average in the next five years.

A turning point may come a year down the road following the U.S. election of a new president, who many environmentalists hope will support deeper, mandatory emissions cuts in contrast to President Bush, who favors only voluntary approaches to reining in greenhouse gases.

The exemption of developing nations from the Kyoto Protocol's mandatory caps has also long been a key complaint of American opponents to the U.N. climate treaty process.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the U.S. welcomed the positive steps outlined in the roadmap but had "serious concerns" about the different responsibilities that will be shouldered by developed and developing nations.

"The problem of climate change cannot be adequately addressed through commitments for emissions cuts by developed countries alone," Perino said.

"Negotiations must clearly differentiate among developing countries in terms of the size of their economies, their level of emissions and level of energy utilization, and sufficiently link the character or extent of responsibility to such factors," Perino said.

The comment seemed aimed squarely at China, a developing nation with an economy that is soon expected to zoom past Germany's to become the world's third biggest, after the United States and Japan.

China also now generates a large share of the world's greenhouse gases, with some experts saying it has already overtaken the United States as the world's No. 1 emitter.

The Bali plan does ask for more from the developing world, giving negotiators the task of considering "mitigation actions" -- voluntary actions to slow emissions growth -- for poorer countries, including such fast-growing economies as China's and India's.

For industrial nations, the Bali plan instructs negotiators to consider mitigation "commitments," mandatory caps as in the Kyoto deal. But the lack -- at U.S. insistence -- of ambitious numerical guidelines troubled many environmentalists.

"The people of the world wanted more. They wanted binding targets," said Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace Brazil.

Climate policy analyst Eliot Diringer, of Washington's Pew center, looked on the positive side.

"It puts no one on the hook right now for emissions reductions," he said. "What's important, though, is that it lets no one off the hook either."

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Associated Press Writers Joseph Coleman, Michael Casey, Chris Brummitt and Zakki Hakim contributed to this report.