Rice says nations must find ways to reduce global warming without starving their economies

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice challenged the world's biggest polluters Thursday to "cut the Gordian knot of fossil fuels" by shifting toward energy sources that will reduce global warming — without harming their economies.

"Ultimately we need to answer just one fundamental question: What kind of world do we wish to inhabit and what kind of world do we wish to pass on to future generations?" Rice said at the start of a two-day climate meeting called by President Bush.

The United States has lined up with China, India and other major polluters in opposition to the mandatory cuts in Earth-warming greenhouse gases sought by the United Nations and European countries.

Rice said the challenge of global climate change cannot be dealt with entirely as an environmental question, but "in a way that does not starve economies of the energy that they need to grow."

"Though united by common goals and collective responsibility, all nations should tackle climate change in the ways that they deem best," she said. "Managing the status quo is simply not an adequate response. ... We must cut the Gordian knot of fossil fuels."

A White House statement said the meeting will emphasize creating more diplomatic processes to find a solution to global warming, rather than setting firm goals for reducing carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for heating up the atmosphere.

The nations summoned by Bush will seek agreement on how the nations might set their own strategies beyond 2012, when the U.N.-brokered Kyoto Protocol expires, but also could include "a long-term global goal," the statement says.

Despite the emphasis on bureaucracy, James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council of Environmental Quality, told participants: "This has to be about more than presentations."

European leaders, who concede that the biggest polluting nations must be part of any solution, walked a thin line between skepticism and optimism.

"We can't do this on the basis of talking about talking or setting goals to set goals," John Ashton, a special representative on climate change for the British foreign secretary, said in an interview. "We know that a voluntary approach to global warming is about as effective as a voluntary speed limit sign in the road. We don't just need an approach that works; we need an approach that works very quickly."