11.29.2005
Global Warming Talks Eye U.S. (Reuters.co.uk)
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
MONTREAL (Reuters) - Host Canada urged a wider fight against global warming at the start of 189-country talks on Monday that will try to enlist the United States and poor nations in U.N.-led schemes to fight climate change beyond 2012.
"Let us set our sights on a more effective, more inclusive long-term approach to climate change," Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion told the opening of the U.N. conference in Montreal, which lasts until December 9.
"More action is required now," Dion told delegates at the talks, likely to involve up to 10,000 representatives of governments, environmental groups and businesses, charged with working out how to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels.
The talks will start mapping out what to do after the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, a first step by about 40 industrial nations to curb emissions, runs out in 2012. Negotiations on a successor could take several years.
The Montreal session included actors and video images showing the risks of a changing climate -- including more frequent hurricanes, ice storms, desertification, locust swarms, forest fires, floods and melting ice caps.
Dion said climate change was the single most important environmental issue facing the world today.
(More ... Top News Article | Reuters.co.uk) ¶ 17:32
MONTREAL (Reuters) - Host Canada urged a wider fight against global warming at the start of 189-country talks on Monday that will try to enlist the United States and poor nations in U.N.-led schemes to fight climate change beyond 2012.
"Let us set our sights on a more effective, more inclusive long-term approach to climate change," Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion told the opening of the U.N. conference in Montreal, which lasts until December 9.
"More action is required now," Dion told delegates at the talks, likely to involve up to 10,000 representatives of governments, environmental groups and businesses, charged with working out how to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases from fossil fuels.
The talks will start mapping out what to do after the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, a first step by about 40 industrial nations to curb emissions, runs out in 2012. Negotiations on a successor could take several years.
The Montreal session included actors and video images showing the risks of a changing climate -- including more frequent hurricanes, ice storms, desertification, locust swarms, forest fires, floods and melting ice caps.
Dion said climate change was the single most important environmental issue facing the world today.
(More ... Top News Article | Reuters.co.uk) ¶ 17:32
