COPENHAGEN -- The biggest climate meeting in history opened in Copenhagen on Monday, December 8, with 15,000 participants from 192 nations amid optimism to agree the first UN climate pact in 12 years to protect the planet.
"The world is depositing hope with you for a short while in the history of mankind," Danish Premier Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the host, told delegates at the opening ceremony, reported Reuters.
He said the participation of world leaders reflects an unprecedented mobilization of political determination to combat climate change.
"It represents a huge opportunity. An opportunity the world cannot afford to miss," Rasmussen asserted.
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Truth About Climate Change (Folder)
"The ultimate responsibility rests with the citizens of the world, who will ultimately bear the fatal consequences, if we fail to act."
Activists asked delegates arriving at the conference centre to go through a green gateway marked "Vote Earth" or a red one marked "Global Warming". They told off anyone choosing red.
Others handed out free coffee to delegates, pamphlets about global warming and buttons urging wider use of public transport.
Over the next 12 days, members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will negotiate over reducing carbon emissions that trap the sun's heat, inflicting potentially catastrophic climate damage.
They will also wrestle with building a mechanism to channel hundreds of tries, helping them reduce their greenhouse-gas pollution and shore up defenses against drought, flood, storm and rising seas.
The UN wants developed nations to agree deep cuts in greenhouse emissions by 2020 and come up with immediate, $10 billion a year in new funds to help the poor cope.
It wants developing nations to start slowing their rising emissions.
The Kyoto pact binds industrialized nations to cut emissions until 2012.
Optimism
The meeting will climax on December 18 with more than 100 heads of state or government, including US President Barack Obama, in attendance.
They will try to agree deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions for the rich by 2020 and raise billions of dollars for the poor in aid.
"A deal is within our reach," said Rasmussen.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, writing in the Guardian newspaper on Monday, said the aim of the meeting is a comprehensive and global agreement that is then converted to an internationally legally binding treaty in no more than six months.
"If by the end of next week we have not got an ambitious agreement, it will be an indictment of our generation that our children will not forgive."
World leaders did not attend when environment ministers agreed the existing UN climate pact, the Kyoto Protocol, in 1997.
Pledges to curb emissions by all the top emitters -- led by China, the US, Russia and India -- have raised hopes for an accord after sluggish negotiations in the past two years.
South Africa added new impetus, saying on Sunday it would cut its carbon emissions to 34 percent below expected levels by 2020, if rich countries furnished financial and technological help.
But the summit will have to overcome deep distrust between rich and poor nations about sharing the cost of emissions cuts.
Some 56 newspapers from 45 countries including The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Toronto Star on Monday published a joint editorial urging world leaders to take decisive action.
"Humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet," it said.
"The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw a calamity coming but did not avert it."
IslamOnline
"The world is depositing hope with you for a short while in the history of mankind," Danish Premier Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the host, told delegates at the opening ceremony, reported Reuters.
He said the participation of world leaders reflects an unprecedented mobilization of political determination to combat climate change.
"It represents a huge opportunity. An opportunity the world cannot afford to miss," Rasmussen asserted.
*
Truth About Climate Change (Folder)
"The ultimate responsibility rests with the citizens of the world, who will ultimately bear the fatal consequences, if we fail to act."
Activists asked delegates arriving at the conference centre to go through a green gateway marked "Vote Earth" or a red one marked "Global Warming". They told off anyone choosing red.
Others handed out free coffee to delegates, pamphlets about global warming and buttons urging wider use of public transport.
Over the next 12 days, members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will negotiate over reducing carbon emissions that trap the sun's heat, inflicting potentially catastrophic climate damage.
They will also wrestle with building a mechanism to channel hundreds of tries, helping them reduce their greenhouse-gas pollution and shore up defenses against drought, flood, storm and rising seas.
The UN wants developed nations to agree deep cuts in greenhouse emissions by 2020 and come up with immediate, $10 billion a year in new funds to help the poor cope.
It wants developing nations to start slowing their rising emissions.
The Kyoto pact binds industrialized nations to cut emissions until 2012.
Optimism
The meeting will climax on December 18 with more than 100 heads of state or government, including US President Barack Obama, in attendance.
They will try to agree deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions for the rich by 2020 and raise billions of dollars for the poor in aid.
"A deal is within our reach," said Rasmussen.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, writing in the Guardian newspaper on Monday, said the aim of the meeting is a comprehensive and global agreement that is then converted to an internationally legally binding treaty in no more than six months.
"If by the end of next week we have not got an ambitious agreement, it will be an indictment of our generation that our children will not forgive."
World leaders did not attend when environment ministers agreed the existing UN climate pact, the Kyoto Protocol, in 1997.
Pledges to curb emissions by all the top emitters -- led by China, the US, Russia and India -- have raised hopes for an accord after sluggish negotiations in the past two years.
South Africa added new impetus, saying on Sunday it would cut its carbon emissions to 34 percent below expected levels by 2020, if rich countries furnished financial and technological help.
But the summit will have to overcome deep distrust between rich and poor nations about sharing the cost of emissions cuts.
Some 56 newspapers from 45 countries including The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Toronto Star on Monday published a joint editorial urging world leaders to take decisive action.
"Humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet," it said.
"The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw a calamity coming but did not avert it."
IslamOnline
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