Former U.S. vice president and Nobel Laureate Al Gore blamed the United States on Thursday for blocking progress at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali. He urged delegates to forge ahead without the U.S. VOA's Nancy-Amelia Collins is in the Indonesian island of Bali and brings us this report.
In an impassioned hour-long speech interrupted many times by applause, former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore said the United States was stopping progress at the U.N. Climate Change talks in Bali.
"I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that. We all know that," he said.
The Bali talks are aimed at launching negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.
The United States strongly objects to a section in the draft document which asks industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by between 25 to 40 percent by 2020.
But the European Union and the vast majority of the delegates representing the 190 nations at the conference want the emission targets included to show that industrialized nations are serious about fighting global warming.
The United States, backed by Japan and Canada, say targets should come at a later date. - VOA News
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