Bali talks aim to jumpstart climate change fight

By David Fogarty

BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) - About 190 nations start talks on Monday to try to sharpen the main weapon against climate change, the Kyoto treaty, by involving all countries ranging from the United States to the poorest in Africa.

Delegates to the U.N.-sponsored talks in Bali, Indonesia, are under intense pressure to launch negotiations on a "roadmap" that will lead to a broader pact by late 2009 to tackle greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for causing global warming.

But the trick is to find the magic formula that gets every nation on board, from the biggest emitters such as the United States and China to the smallest and most vulnerable, such as tropical island states or sub-Saharan African nations.

Over the past years, climate change talks have been bogged down by arguments over who's going to pay the bill for cleaner technology and how to share out the burden of emissions curbs between rich and poor nations.

The bottom line is no nation at the Bali talks wants its economy to suffer by implementing strict emissions curbs. But climate scientists say time is running out.

"We're already seeing many of the impacts of climate change," said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, referring to melting glaciers, droughts and rising seas. "We are on a very dangerous path," he told a news conference.

He said the talks had to conclude in 2009 to avoid a gap after the Kyoto Protocol's first phase ends in 2012.

"It's here and now. Indonesia is already suffering from the impacts of global warming," said Fitrian Ardiansyah of the WWF conservation group. WWF said weather records were being broken around the world, from a melting Arctic to Australian droughts.