Former US Vice President Al Gore on Thursday in Bali urged the Bush Administration to act with sense of urgency on climate change, which he described as a "moral" issue.

 

"My own country, the United States of America, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali," said Gore in an emotional speech delivered on the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference.

 

Gore, who won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for campaigning global actions on climate change, said climate change is "not a political issue", "not a diplomatic issue" but "a moral issue".

 

Gore joined the voices for America to take urgent action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. The emissions reduction targets issue has been foot-dragging negotiations ever since the UN conference opened on Dec. 3.

 

The United States has been objecting including in a final conference document a suggestion that industrialized countries reduce emissions by between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020.

 

The United States is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and is the only country that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol among major industrialized countries.

 

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires 37 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a relatively modest average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

 

The Bush Administration has argued that the climate pact would harm the US economy.

 

Pressure even has come from America's alley Australia, whose Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has urged Washington to "embrace" binding targets. The new Prime Minister handed on Wednesday the official document ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

 

Earlier Thursday, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel confirmed that the EU Major Emitters will not attend Bush's Major Economies Meeting in Hawaii in January without substantive progress at the Bali Conference.

 

"No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting," said the top environment official of the European Union.

 

With deadline set for noon Friday for delegates to iron out differences, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer voiced concern about the pace of negotiations.

 

He said many of the outstanding issues taken into the high-level segment have been linked to each other, creating an "an all-or-nothing situation," and that if the work on a future agreement was not completed in time, then "the whole house of cards falls to pieces."

 

On the recurring question of whether emission reduction ranges would be included in the text on the future, Mr. de Boer acknowledged that the European Union and a number of G77 countries were in favor of including the 25 percent-40 percent range in the text, while others such as the United States had made clear their opposition to this idea. Any inclusion of numbers in the text, he added, would exceed his expectations for the conference.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2007)