Warming world wonders what lies beyond Kyoto

The ice is melting and the heat is on for international delegates assembling in Buenos Aires next week to find new ways to confront global warming under the 194-nation treaty on climate change.

The treaty's Kyoto Protocol, requiring initial cuts in "greenhouse gas" emissions by 2012, finally comes into force in February, seven years after it was negotiated. Next, European governments want the annual treaty conference — Dec. 6-17 in the Argentine capital — to get down to talks on steps beyond 2012 to limit heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

"We are, in fact, only at the beginning of what we need to do," Margot Wallstrom, the European Union's outgoing environment chief, recently told European Parliament members.

But the U.S. government, which rejects Kyoto and its mandatory controls, balks at that idea.

"We think it's premature to be discussing post-Kyoto 2012 arrangements," Paula J. Dobriansky, the undersecretary of state who will head the U.S. delegation, said in an interview.

Instead, she said, she will use the conference to spotlight Bush administration efforts to develop cleaner energy technologies and ways to capture and safely store carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. Developing countries, facing possible emissions controls for the first time after 2012, also have resisted opening talks about the "post-Kyoto" future.

That debate will go on in the corridors at Buenos Aires, while the formal meeting agenda puts a "major, major emphasis" on adapting to climate change, said the Dutch head of the treaty secretariat, Joke Waller-Hunter.

Small islands and low-lying lands such as Bangladesh worry over rising seas. Poor nations face possible water shortages if warmth washes away glaciers. Climate change may kill off traditional crops.

"Developing countries don't have capacity to deal with climate-related risk," Waller-Hunter said. They're seeking more technical and financial help to predict and cope with changed climates.

The focus on adaptation also suggests that warming is having an impact sooner than many anticipated.