MONTREAL, December 10, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A landmark UN conference agreed Saturday, December 10, to extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and launch a dialogue between Kyoto members and the United States on long-term action on greenhouse gases.

"We have completed our Montreal marathon, although the road before us remains so long. We are going to reconcile humanity with its planet," Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion said as he brought down the gavel on a meeting high on drama, and long on exhaustion, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was tasked with charting the next steps in tackling the emissions from fossil fuel gases that scientists say are trapping heat from the Sun and disrupting Earth's fragile climate system.

After often-bitter negotiations, members of the Kyoto Protocol agreed to start talks from next May on how to cut their emissions beyond 2012, when the treaty's present "commitment period" expires.

A year from now, the chief negotiating positions of the big players are likely to have emerged, although the negotiations will probably last several years or even longer.

The agreement was a crucial show of support for a treaty that has been in deep trouble since March 2001 when the US, the world's biggest carbon polluter, walked away from it. Australia is the only other industrialized country that has refused to ratify Kyoto.

The accord also gave a powerful boost to the fledgling market in carbon emissions, a key mechanism set up under Kyoto to encourage cuts. The market has been beset by fears that Kyoto could die after 2012.

The Montreal meeting brought together 8,700 ministers, senior officials, green campaigners, scientists, and businessmen.

Clinton said that Bush was "flat wrong" for rejecting the Kyoto protocol. (Reuters)

The Montreal agreement also built a bridge between the Kyoto members and the United States by agreeing to a "dialogue" on how to make long-term cuts in greenhouse gas pollution.

The dialogue is vaguely worded and, in deference to the US, has no binding obligations or specific goals.

But, if it works, it could break US isolationism on climate change.

"What we have is a highly successful outcome... a hugely important day in the global effort to tackle climate change," said British Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett, whose country is current EU chair.

"(It was) important not least because the whole global community, including some of the key players such as the United States, India and China, have agreed to work together through the United Nations process to examine the way forward."

Stealing the show on Friday, December 9, former US president Bill Clinton told the meeting his successor, George W. Bush, was "flat wrong" for rejecting Kyoto.

Cutting greenhouse gases, he said, was good for the economy.

The Montreal meeting would have ended on Friday had it not been for Washington battling on the "dialogue" question and Russia's last-minute roadblock on launching the post-2012 Kyoto talks.

Both backed down, receiving in exchange a face-saving textual compromise.

Green campaigners hope that by involving the US more closely in a multilateral process, it will be easier for Washington to come back into the Kyoto fold after Bush leaves office in January 2009.

Even if all the present Kyoto goals are met, industrialized countries will have trimmed output of greenhouse gases by just one or two percent by 2012 as compared to a 1990 benchmark.

Tackling the problem will thus require a broader, longer-term approach, bringing in the US as well as China, which is the second biggest contributor to greenhouse gases, and maybe Brazil and India too.

Developing countries at present lie outside the requirement to make specific cuts in emissions.

They argue that rich countries are most to blame for global warming because of their unbridled burning of carbon fuels in the 20th century.

Another task will be to switch economies from dirty fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.

That is the biggest challenge of all, because oil, gas, and coal have a tight grip on the world's energy market, enjoying a big price advantage and political clout over new, cleaner alternatives such as solar, wind, hydrogen and biofuels.

Greenhouse gases are the carbon by-product of burning oil, gas and coal.

They are released into the air each year, trapping heat from the Sun and causing what scientists say are early signs of climate change -- disruption of rainfall patterns, melting glaciers and polar sea ice and possibly, the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, the worst on record.