'We're all doomed without a deal', Ban tells conference

The aim is to set an agenda and deadline for talks that will lead to a climate change pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

Ban urged quick action as negotiators worked on a final conference decision document. One version included guidelines for industrialised countries to cut their emissions overall by 2020 by between 25 per cent and 40 per cent.

“The situation is so desperately serious that any delay could push us past the tipping point, beyond which the ecological, financial and human costs would increase dramatically,” Ban told delegates.

“We are at a crossroad,” he added. “One path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear.”

The latest draft of the document, to be released at the conference’s conclusion on Friday, included a new mention of “quantified national emission limitation and reduction commitments” for industrialised countries.

The United States rejected the 1997 Kyoto pact in part because it included mandatory emissions cuts, and Washington has supported only voluntary targets.

The United States has publicly opposed mentions of targets or emissions cuts guidelines in the Bali document, arguing that it was premature to state goals at such an early date. Negotiations for a post-Kyoto pact are to last at least two years.

UN officials, however, say the numbers are only guidelines to be agreed in coming talks. The European Union, developing countries and environmentalists have argued strenuously in favour of including general goals in the Bali declaration.

The latest draft included dozens of changes from the earlier version, suggesting that negotiators were far from reaching agreement on a final wording. In past years, talks on the declaration on the last day have dragged on into the night to the next morning.

Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for environment, said emissions guidelines were crucial to prevent global temperatures from exceeding 2C over pre-industrial levels. The EU has committed itself to 20 per cent to 30 per cent reductions below 1990 levels by 2020.

“We need this range of reductions by developed countries,” he said. “Science tells us that these reductions are necessary. Logic requires that we listen to science.”

Australia, despite its sudden embrace of the Kyoto pact, has shied away from supporting the emissions goals yet, saying it must await the conclusion of a study sometime next year.

“We recognise the need for an interim target,” said Penny Wong, Australia’s minister for climate change. “We have a clear process of scientific and economic analysis to determine what that interim target should be.”

Canada and Japan also oppose inclusion of the suggested figures.

Environmentalists urged them to reconsider.

“This is not the direction we need to be going in. The stakes are too high for this kind of political games,” Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said earlier in the day.

The struggle over targets coincided with the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Kyoto accord on December 11, 1997, in Japan.

The Kyoto pact requires 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for global warming by an average five per cent below 1990 levels in the next five years.

The US is the only major industrial nation to reject Kyoto. President George Bush contended the emissions cuts would harm the American economy, and should have been imposed on China, India and other fast-growing poorer economies.

The rest of the world hopes to enlist the United States in the post-Kyoto phase of internationally binding greenhouse-gas reductions. Many are hoping Australia, following its decision to sign Kyoto, will play a leading role.