Nations Agree to Binding Climate Talks

United States Balks, Agrees to Informal Dialogue

Bill Clinton walks with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin after they spoke to reporters at the conference in Montreal. (By Ryan Remiorz -- Canadian Press Via Associated Press)

MONTREAL, Dec. 10 -- Brushing aside the Bush administration's initial protests, all the industrialized nations except the United States and Australia reached an agreement early Saturday to embark on a fresh round of formal talks aimed at setting new mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, when the existing pact known as the Kyoto Protocol expires.

The United States, after fiercely resisting any new international talks to address Earth's warming climate, agreed to a separate nonbinding informal dialogue to respond to climate change as representatives of nearly 200 nations concluded two weeks of meetings on the issue.

In the separate set of negotiations aimed at extending a second, voluntary climate compact, the United States dropped its resistance  which included a midnight walkout  and brokered language that would allow for nonbinding talks.

The two accords nearly fell apart in the early morning hours after Russia proposed creating a new pact under Kyoto for countries to set voluntary targets for emission cuts. In the end, Russia relented and agreed to a compromise measure that would allow nations to offer their views on how such a program might be established

The agreement to begin a process that would extend the Kyoto pact underscored how many nations now see global warming as the world's most serious environmental threat. The Bush administration disavowed the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 and has opposed any kind of mandatory limits on carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, arguing that research, new technology and market forces are the best way to address warming linked to the buildup of greenhouse gases.

"We would have wanted a stronger outcome, but we should not underestimate the strength of this package," Stavros Dimas, the European Union's commissioner for the environment, told reporters. "Kyoto is alive and kicking."

The last day was also marked by high drama as former president Bill Clinton urged meaningful action to combat global warming, giving a half-hour speech that the Bush administration had tried to block, according to sources close to Clinton who would not speak on the record for fear of jeopardizing the talks.

Few question that the world is now warming at an unprecedented rate, due at least in part to human activity. On Dec. 15, scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center plan to release data showing that 2005 remains on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, with land temperatures between Dec. 1, 2004, and Nov. 30 at 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above average. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and in Britain have interpreted the same data more conservatively and consider 2005 likely to be the second-hottest year on record.

\Such statistics, coupled with evidence of melting glaciers, rising sea levels and more intense hurricanes, have prompted many policymakers to press for stricter limits on greenhouse gases. Under Kyoto, 157 countries agreed to cut such emissions by an average of 5 percent below their 1990 levels by 2012, and the same nations pledged Friday to begin negotiations on a possible new set of emission cuts.

The United States, which generates a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, had questioned the need to engage in even nonbinding talks on the subject. When the Europeans and Canadians proposed such talks Thursday, chief American climate negotiator Harlan Watson rejected it on the grounds that it would be tantamount to formal negotiations.

"If it walks like a duck and talks like duck, it's a duck," Watson told the other delegates, according to several participants in the closed midnight session.

As Watson walked out, one of the other delegates, baffled, responded: "I don't understand your reference to a duck. What about this document is like a duck?"