Kerry calls for climate change action

US secretary of state John Kerry has called for all nations to do more to stop global warming.

Mr Kerry derided sceptics of the view that human activity causes global warming as “shoddy scientists” and “extreme ideologues”, and said big companies and special interests should not be allowed to “hijack” the climate debate.

Aides said Mr Kerry had chosen Indonesia for the first of what is to be a series of speeches on the topic this year partly because, as an archipelago of over 17,000 islands, it is particularly at risk from rising sea levels.

Mr Kerry’s public push takes place against the backdrop of a negotiation among nearly 200 nations about a possible new global treaty on climate change that is scheduled to be agreed next year to address greenhouse gas emissions from 2020.

Over the weekend, China and the US, the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gases, pledged to work together to attenuate the effects of climate change.

“China and the United States will work together... to collaborate through enhanced policy dialogue, including the sharing of information regarding their respective post-2020 plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a US-China joint statement.

International talks to try to agree on a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are due to be held in Paris next year. The US never ratified the Kyoto deal.

A new global pact might include pledges on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and measures to enable the poorest nations to adapt better to climate change.

Mr Kerry welcomed Chinese co-operation. “This is a unique, co-operative effort between China and the United States and we have hopes that it will help to set an example for global leadership and global seriousness on the issue of next year’s climate negotiation,” he told reporters before departing for Jakarta.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a report last September it was more convinced than ever that humans are the main culprits behind global warming, and predicted that the impact from greenhouse gas emissions could linger for centuries.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said the study was a call for governments to work to reach a planned UN accord in 2015 to combat global warming.

Mr Ban is seeking to re-energise the global climate change debate and boost the UN’s role. He has appointed former New York city mayor Michel Bloomberg, former Ghana president John Kufuor, and former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg as special envoys on climate change.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, has attacked prime minister David Cameron for giving up the fight against climate change, saying Britain is “sleepwalking into a national security crisis”. He said the winter storms that have been wreaking havoc should serve as a “wake-up call”.

It was “extraordinary” that the prime minister now portrayed climate change as “a matter of conscience”, when it had been a “core conviction” before his election, said Mr Miliband.