Don't buy into the paradigm

Climate summit failure looms, leaders warn

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned of a looming disaster, while the United States insisted it would be better to leave Copenhagen with no deal rather than a bad one.

"There is less than 24 hours. If we carry on like this, it will be a failure," Sarkozy warned angrily from the conference podium. "Failure at Copenhagen would be catastrophic for all of us."

The European Union called for an emergency meeting of "relevant players" late Thursday in a bid to break the deadlock.

More than 120 leaders, including US President Barack Obama, are due to attend the summit on Friday, but few at Copenhagen's Bella Centre held out hope of a deal that could transform the 12-parlay into a triumph.

"Coming back with an empty agreement would be far worse than coming back empty-handed," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs before Obama left Washington.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused developing nations -- without naming them -- of backsliding on pledges to open their promised controls on carbon emissions to wide scrutiny.

The question is "a deal-breaker for us," she said.

China and India say they are willing to take voluntary measures to slow their surges in heat-trapping greenhouse-gas emissions.

But they are reluctant to accept tough international inspection and insist rich nations shoulder the main burden by accepting huge reduction targets.

"We should not continue to dwell on these issues that are dividing us. We should narrow our differences, otherwise we are facing a failure," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told reporters.

The sole glimmer of hope in the darkening mood was progress on funding to help poor countries menaced by climate change.

Clinton announced Washington would contribute to a US$100 billion annual fund through 2020 to help poor nations -- but provided an ambitious overall deal was completed in Copenhagen.

Yet a mountain of work needed to be done with little more than a day to go, and there were rumours that the talks would run into the weekend.

The European Union called for all parties "to urgently go to the outer limits of their flexibility" so that talks could advance.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, tried to talk up the prospects of an agreement, saying he had "not seen anything that indicates we cannot seal a deal".

"There are more than 130 leaders here. If they cannot seal a deal who can?"

After earlier expressing doubt that the summit would pin down an agreement to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said leaders could forge a deal but added that "we will not be able to work out all the little details".

A gloomy senior delegate told AFP: "It won't be feasible to get a complete agreement unless it's just one page. We need several more months."

Scientists say failure would be potentially disastrous, condemning hundreds of millions of people to worsening drought, flood, storms and rising seas.

The United States was widely condemned for foot-dragging on climate change under President George W. Bush, and Obama is hoping his presence at the finale will be evidence of a transformation of policy.

EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said he expected Obama to announce further US action to push things forward.

"I really expect them to announce something more because if they don't do it, others will find an excuse also not to move," Barroso told reporters.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ridiculed the billions being spent on the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He told the conference the cash would be better used on energy technology and maintained all countries should have access to nuclear power.

"All countries must gain access to new technologies to diversify their energy resources and be able to use clean and renewable energy such as wind, solar, sea tide, geothermal and nuclear energies," he said.