UN climate panel chief pessimistic about progress at Bali summit

0 Comments | AFP, November, 2007

HYDERABAD, India (AFP) — The co-head of the UN climate-change panel that shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize said Thursday he was pessimistic about progress at next month's global environmental summit in Bali.

The world may have to wait until the Copenhagen summit two years later before governments summon the political will to budge, said Martin Parry, co-chair of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), regarded as the world's top scientific authority on global warming and its impact.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Bali aims to see countries agree to launch a roadmap for negotiating cuts in carbon emissions from 2012, when current pledges under the Kyoto Protocol run out.

"I'm not an optimist," Parry...