Push ahead: Al Gore gestures as he delivers a speech during a meeting on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference 2007 in Nusa Dua on Bali island, 13 December 2007. Gore called on the world conference on climate change to make a deal without the U.S., accusing Washington of obstructing progress in the talks.

Credit: AFP

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BALI: Al Gore on Thursday delivered a rousing call for the world to fight against climate change without the United States, which he accused of blocking tactics at the key U.N. conference in Bali.

Exhausted negotiators at the Indonesian resort island grappled over deadlocked text early Friday, just hours before the talks were scheduled to conclude. But delegates said they saw little hope of any early breakthrough on the biggest problem.

To warm applause at a conference side event, Gore took the lash to the United States of President George W. Bush and demanded tough commitments to crack down on the greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming.

No more diplomatic niceties

Gore, who narrowly lost to Bush in 2000, told the packed conference room that he was no longer in office and "not bound by diplomatic niceties."

"So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth," said Gore, referring to the climate film that won him an Oscar.

"My own country, the United States is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that," he said to loud cheers. "But my country is not the only one that can take steps to ensure that we move forward from Bali with progress and with hope."

Environment ministers, or their stand-ins, from more than 180 countries have until today to agree a framework for tackling global warming past 2012, when pledges under the Kyoto Protocol, boycotted by Bush, expire.

Hailing growing local efforts in the United States to fight global warming, the newly minted 2007 Nobel peace laureate urged the conference to be hopeful that the next president who succeeds Bush in 2009 will take action.

"You can feel anger and frustration, and direct it at the United States of America," said Gore. "Or you can make a second choice, you can decide to move forward and do all of the difficult work that needs to be done and save a large open blank space in your document and put a footnote by it that says this document is incomplete."

"Over the next two years, the United States is going to be somewhere it isn't right now. You must anticipate that," he said.

Blocking role

The White House denied that its delegation was playing a blocking role. "I think he is incorrect," said spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Despite Gore's impassioned intervention, delegates were mostly consumed by the much drier work of finishing a declaration before the conference, launched on December 3, closes today. The goal is set down the parameters for negotiations that will give a quantum boost to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and helping poor countries that are most vulnerable to climate change.

The European Union, backed by developing countries, wants a reference by industrialised countries that a cut of 25 to 40 per cent in their emissions by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, will be a guideline for future talks. The U.S. is opposed to the 25 to 40 figures, and delegates say its position is also shared by Japan, Canada and Russia.

Angered by what it saw as U.S.-led efforts to water down the final text, the E.U. warned of snubbing climate talks called by Bush next month in Hawaii if the Bali meeting collapsed: "If we would have a failure in Bali, it would be meaningless to have the major economies meeting," said Humberto Rosa, secretary of state for the environment from E.U. president Portugal.

Escalating risks

The White House retorted: "Obviously, those comments are not constructive to a conversation where everybody wants to get together for this meeting to talk about a framework for moving forward."

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, rejected blame, saying: "Every country has a negotiating position, not just the U.S."

"We will lead, the U.S. will lead, and we will continue to lead, but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow," he said.

In a report issued this year, the U.N.'s climate change body, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), predicted that by 2100 global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 °C and 6.4 °C compared to levels between 1980 and 1999, stoked by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.

More powerful storms, droughts, floods and rising sea levels are among the risks that will escalate in coming decades, threatening hunger and homelessness for millions, it said. On Thursday, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported that 2007 was set to be the seventh warmest year on record and the decade of 1998 to 2007 the warmest ever documented.