UN summit extends Kyoto Protocol to 2020

Almost 200 nations extended a weakened UN plan for combating global warming until 2020 on Saturday with a modest set of measures that would do nothing to halt rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Many countries and environmentalists said the deal at the end of marathon two-week UN talks in Qatar would fail to slow rising temperatures or avert more floods, droughts, heat waves, and rising sea levels.

Environment ministers extended until 2020 the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges approximately 35 industrialised nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions until the end of 2012. That keeps the pact alive as the sole legally binding climate plan.