Gore accuses US of blocking climate deal

Climate change campaigner and former vice president candidate Al Gore today accused the US of blocking progress at the Bali talks.

But he remained optimistic that a breakthrough was possible in the final days of the conference aimed at finding a successor to the Kyoto agreement.

“Some of the reports are worrisome, but I know from experience … that when breakthroughs do occur, they usually happen in the last 48 hours,” the Nobel Prize winner said.

“I hope there will be a change on the part of some countries, including most importantly my own, the United States.”

The EU and developing nations strongly favour specific target ranges for emissions, but the US has argued strenuously at Bali that including such language in the final document would prejudice negotiations over the next two years.

“The position of the administration in the US right now appears to be to try to block any progress in Bali. I hope that will change,” Gore said.

Mr Gore and the UN’s chief climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri will travel to Bali today for the ending of the two-week climate change conference on Friday.

Meanwhile in Bali UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a call for rich nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 may be “too ambitious” to include in the final agreed international statement on climate change.

Drafts of the statement have included guidelines for industrialised countries to consider cutting emissions blamed for rising temperature by between 25%t and 40%.

But Ban said those levels might have to wait for subsequent negotiations, though at some point targets for emissions cuts would be necessary.

Talks picked up pace today with the arrival of ministers and heads of state who urged the world in a series of speeches to quickly impose deep cuts in emissions to head off scientific predictions of rising seas, worsening droughts and famines, and melting ice-sheets.

The EU and developing nations strongly favour specific target ranges for rich countries’ emissions, which supporters say are needed to avoid temperatures rising above 2C over pre-industrial levels.

The United States, however, has argued strenuously that including such language in the final document now would prejudice negotiations over the next two years.

“The reality in this business is that once numbers appear in the text, it prejudges the outcome and will tend to drive the negotiations in one direction,” said head negotiator Harlan Watson.

Many negotiators at Bali have said that a top priority was getting an agreement that the United States could work with. But German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel – whose government has pledged to cut emissions by 40% by 2020 - said the Bali conference would be meaningless without clear targets.

“I do not need a paper from Bali in which we only say, 'OK, we’ll meet next year again,”' he said. “How we can find a roadmap without having a target, without having a goal?”

Delegates laid out their vision of an agreement: that wealthy nations, as the prime drivers of global warming, should make the first cuts in emissions and help poorer countries develop in a clean way with technology and assistance.

They also called on rapidly developing nations, such as China, to rein in high levels of pollution.

The Kyoto Protocol commits 36 industrialised nations to reduce greenhouse emissions by an average of 5% between 2008 and 2012, but the pact has been severely weakened by Washington's refusal to join.