NEW YORK--The world should not wait until next year to cobble together a new climate change pact, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday.
Ban, addressing diplomats and officials at a ceremony for the 20th anniversary of the U.N. climate panel, said countries negotiating a successor deal to the Kyoto Protocol should aim for a meaningful breakthrough in Poznan, Poland, in December.
Delaying major advances until the end of 2009, when a Copenhagen summit will aim to finalize an accord to tackle rising global temperatures, may be ill-advised, Ban told the event in Geneva.
The Kyoto Protocol binds 37 developed nations to curb emissions of global warming greenhouse gases until 2012. Neither the United States nor China, the top two greenhouse gas emitters, have imposed limits under Kyoto.
Negotiations last week in Ghana, in which countries made commitments to help save tropical forests, were the latest of a series of international meetings meant to culminate in a new accord to counter the effects of climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), formed in 1988, has warned global warming will cause rising seas, big storms, heatwaves and droughts. That U.N. panel shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore last year.
U.S. President George W. Bush, who has opposed the Kyoto accord, will leave office in January. But the slowing global economy may make it difficult for Washington and others to accept a climate change accord that could add to energy costs.
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