POZNAN, Poland (AFP) — The way is "now clear" to sign a global climate agreement in 2009, helped greatly by the election of Barack Obama as US president, Nobel-winning green activist Al Gore said on Friday.
"I would like to relay a message that I heard from the people of the United States of America this year that I think is very relevant to the task the world is facing over this next year: 'Yes we can.'," Gore said to a standing ovation on the final day of UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland.
Gore said that before coming to Poznan he had held a meeting with Obama in Chicago at which the president-elect had assured him that climate change would be a "top priority of his administration."
Obama "emphasised that once he is president the United States will once again engage in these negotiations and help lead toward a successful conclusion," Gore said.
He read out several public statements on climate change from Obama and said: "Do not discount these words."
Delegates in Poznan are hoping that Obama, who takes office on January 20, will be a breath of fresh air when it comes to international climate talks after eight years of the outgoing president George W. Bush.
Obama has said he wants the United States to commit to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80 percent in 2050, mainly through a 150-billion dollar, 10-year programme to develop renewable forms of energy.
Some 11,000 participants from more than 190 countries have gathered in Poznan to lay the groundwork for a treaty agreement to sharply reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that drive global warming.
The deal is to be signed and sealed in Copenhagen by the end of 2009, but progress has been excruciatingly slow, in part because the United States under Bush turned it back on the Kyoto Protocol.
"I think the road to Copenhagen is now clear," Gore said.
The former US vice president said that reaching an accord was a matter of survival for the planet.
"Our home, Earth, is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is of course not the planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings," he said.
Halting global warming was not just a political imperative, he added, but a moral issue, and world leaders must step up over the coming year and play a more active role.
"It is time, between now and the gathering in Copenhagen, for heads of state to become personally involved in meeting several times," he said.
On Thursday, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Poznan that he was considering convening a summit on climate change during the next UN General Assembly session that begins in September 2009.
Negotiations among the 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are mid-way through a two-year "roadmap" set down on the Indonesian island of Bali last year.
The envisioned Copenhagen treaty will amount to an action plan for curbing greenhouse gases and channelling help for vulnerable countries beyond 2012, when current provisions expire under the Kyoto Protocol.
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