The world needs tougher action to combat global warming than a plan by President George W. Bush to halt a rise in US greenhouse gas emissions only by 2025, delegates at a climate conference in Paris said today.
South Africa, one of 17 nations at the two-day global warming talks that started today, called Mr Bush's proposals "disappointing" and unambitious when many other industrialized economies are already cutting emissions.
"There is no way whatever that we can agree to what the US is proposing," South African Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said in a statement.
Developing nations such as China and India also want the rich, led by the United States, to cut emissions now.
The United Nations and France noted that studies by the UN Climate Panel say that world emissions will have to peak within 10 to 15 years and then fall sharply to avert the worst of floods, droughts, and rising seas.
Mr Bush unveiled a plan yesterday to cap US emissions by 2025, toughening an existing target of slowing the growth of emissions by 2012. The United States and China are the top greenhouse gas emitters.
"The growth in emissions will slow over the next decade, stop by 2025, and begin to reverse thereafter, so long as technology continues to advance," according to the plan published by the White House.
"This is disappointing," one senior European official said of the Bush plan in Paris. "But Bush will be leaving office soon. What he says doesn't matter so much any more."
Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have all urged tougher caps on emissions than those proposed by Mr Bush.
World leaders agreed at a 190-nation climate conference in Bali last December, to launch a two-year drive to negotiate a new UN treaty to fight global warming to succeed the Kyoto Protocol from 2013.