The United States is doing better lately than some countries in restraining growth of global warming gases, and it isn't likely to change its stand against mandatory controls, a U.S. negotiator said Monday as 5,000 delegates opened the annual U.N. climate conference.
Among those nations that do accept the Kyoto Protocol's emissions caps, "with few exceptions you're seeing those emissions rise again," Harlan Watson told reporters.
The chief American delegate was defending the U.S. position as an industrial country that rejects Kyoto's obligatory reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases that scientists blame for global warming.
Others here, meanwhile, sounded a more urgent note about growing perils from climate change.
"We are all gathered this morning on behalf of mankind because we acknowledge that climate change is rapidly emerging as one of the most serious threats humanity will ever face," Kenyan Vice President Moody Awori told delegates in an opening speech.
In the next two weeks, the delegates will get a closed-door preview of the latest scientific findings on a warming world, to be published next year in a comprehensive U.N. assessment by the world's leading climate scientists.
Among more recent results:
_ World temperatures have risen to levels not seen in at least 12,000 years, propelled by rapid warming in the past 30 years, U.S. climate scientists reported in September.
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