Top polluters fail to agree climate change targets

A climate conference of the world's biggest polluters ended today without fixed targets for slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

Delegates from 16 nations, plus the European Union and the United Nations, met in Hawaii to discuss what should be included in a blueprint for combating climate change.

Among the topics were energy-efficient technologies, ways rich countries could help developing countries and countering deforestation.

Delegates said the US, who organised the meeting, showed a new flexibility since earlier climate change meetings, and that they were able to talk frankly about their differences.

"We're happy the position of the United States is changing," Brice LaLonde, France's climate change ambassador, said.

He pointed to bills in Congress addressing climate change and the Bush administration's move to host the Hawaii meeting as evidence of a shift for Washington. He said France hoped for additional changes however, specifically for the US to join other industrialised nations in agreeing to a national mandatory greenhouse gas reduction target.

"Of course, we want more. We hope in the next weeks after these discussions that we'll be able to deliver more," he said. "But it's a good start."

Delegates did not discuss the details of a EU proposal for industrialised countries to slash emissions by 25-40%, said Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Commission's head of climate change negotiations.

The emissions reduction proposal, and US opposition to it, was one of the biggest sticking points of a contentious climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, last month.

The conference ended with the US agreeing to join nearly 190 countries to draw up a blueprint for fighting climate change by 2009. That only happened after participants loudly booed repeated US objections to the document, however.

Britain's environment minister, Phil Woolas, said no nation wants to be singled out as the obstacle to progress on climate change.

"Bali has put the spotlight on you," Woolas said during a break in the Hawaii talks.

He said delegates shared a sense that work needs to get done because of the dire consequences of rising temperatures, sea levels and environmental catastrophes.

"There's a realisation that we have to get an agreement; otherwise we're all going to drown," Woolas said.

Nations represented at the conference account for 80% of emissions that scientists say contribute to global warming.

In addition to the US, Britain and France, they are Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea and South Africa.

Environmentalists were sceptical about what the Hawaii talks would accomplish, given the US opposition to mandatory national reduction targets of the kind agreed to under the Kyoto Protocol a decade ago.

The EU has proposed cutting its overall emissions by 20% from 1990 levels, or 14% from 2005.