CANADA: The EU has been urged by environmentalists to take a much stronger leadership role at the UN climate change summit if there is to be any chance of striking a deal by the weekend.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to an agreement is the US insistence that it will not even talk about the future, either in the context of the Kyoto Protocol or the wider UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Harlan L Watson, head of the US delegation, reiterated this hard line during top-level negotiations at the weekend. He said any "foward-looking discussion" under the convention would be "incompatible with US policy".
Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth said the EU and its British presidency were "wasting their time" trying to convince the US to come on board. "What they should be doing is moving on, with or without the US."
Referring to the Bush administration's implacable opposition to targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, he said: "The world cannot afford to wait for regime change in the US. What is needed is clear leadership from the EU."
A member of the Canadian delegation said it was clear negotiations on new targets would take several years. "It took two years to negotiate Kyoto and another four years to flesh out how the protocol would actually work."
Canadians are acutely aware that the Arctic is warming more rapidly than other parts of the world. Melting polar ice-caps have already resulted in rising sea levels, changes in marine ecosystems and a reduction in the number of polar bears.
Ireland has reason to be concerned, too, following last week's report of a finding by scientists that the ocean current driving the Gulf Stream - largely responsible for our relatively mild climate - has slowed by as much as 30 per cent over the past 12 years.
Forecasts that this would give northern Europe much colder winters, by as much as 10 degrees in places, add urgency to the efforts being made in Montreal to grapple with the need to make deeper cuts in the emissions blamed for melting ice-caps.
Though Canadians see some value in negotiating new emission reduction targets for the "post-Kyoto period" (after 2012), they are concerned that such a process would not include the US, Australia and rapidly developing countries such as China.
That's why Canadian environment minister Stéphane Dion, who is presiding at the conference, has tabled a "non-paper" suggesting that twin-track talks should take place under the convention to allow as many countries as possible to participate.
The rationale is that this would also allow a much wider range of issues to be discussed and could even lead to "new kinds of commitments", rather than focusing on country-by-country cuts in emissions, as the Kyoto Protocol does. "Basically, what we want from this meeting is agreement to initiate a robust process of negotiations over the next several years," another Canadian official said, adding that the shape of a new deal should be known "long before" Kyoto runs out in 2012.
Even before Montreal the EU proposed achieving an overall 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, relative to 1990 levels, with the aim to cap the rise in global temperatures at 2 degrees Celsius (relative to pre-industrial levels).
However, this is unlikely to be taken up by the Bush administration. But even in the US, individual states and business sectors are already doing their bit to combat global warming.
"American people, business, state and city leaders want to see international action. It must go ahead and make a firm commitment to clear targets for tackling climate change as Kyoto moves into its second phase," said Mr Juniper.
Environmentalists expect that a renewed push for agreement will be made following the arrival today of British environment secretary Margaret Beckett, to lead the large EU delegation.