Climate Change, Greenhouse Gas Emissions | featured news

The world's top greenhouse polluter hosts week-long U.N. climate talks from Monday aimed at sealing a broader pact to fight global warming and helping poorer nations with money and clean-energy technology.

Saying that that richer countries were not doing enough to cut emissions, developing countries’ delegates upended climate talks on Monday.

A key U.S. Senate environment committee approved a Democratic climate change bill on Thursday that would require industry to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 20 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

The world can still agree a deal in December to curb greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for a warmer world, co-chairs of a meeting of major polluters in London -- Britain and the United States -- said on Sunday.

Four of President Barack Obama's top environmental and energy officials are urging the Senate to pass legislation to reduce emissions of the gases linked to global warming.

The heads of the Energy Department, Agriculture Department, Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency told a Senate panel Tuesday they should pass a bill similar to one the House narrowly cleared late last month. That legislation would impose the first limits on greenhouse gases, reducing them by 80 percent by mid-century.

A landmark climate bill narrowly passed a procedural hurdle in the House, a sign that leadership may have the votes for final passage later in the day.

Climate-change heavyweights U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and Nobel prize winner Al Gore urged more than 500 business leaders on Sunday to lend their corporate muscle to reaching a global deal on reducing greenhouse gases. The CEOs of PepsiCo, Nestle, BP and other major world businesses began meeting in Copenhagen, where politicians will gather in December to negotiate a new U.N.-brokered climate treaty.