Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- One hundred eighty-nine countries agreed to start formal negotiations for a new treaty to fight global warming, following a two-week debate that exposed the gap they must close between rich and poor nations.

The U.S., Canada and Japan rebuffed demands by developing countries for pledges to cut greenhouse-gas emissions at the United Nations-led climate talks in Poznan, Poland. Requests by China and South Africa for more industrialized nations to share clean-energy technologies got no support at the talks.

“Lots of proposals met with deafening silence,” Keya Chatterjee, an observer to the talks in Poznan, Poland for the World Wildlife Fund. “We achieved only the minimum, which was to set an ambitious plan for next year.”

Warned by Nobel Peace Price-winner Al Gore Jr. that time is running out for solutions, delegates set deadlines to complete a treaty by next December in Copenhagen. Without a new plan to stem heat-trapping emissions that are warming the planet, more glaciers will melt, sea levels will rise, and droughts and floods will intensify, UN scientists have said.

At a convention that drew 11,500 people, from envoys and academics to scientists and environmental activists, Gore today stood before a standing ovation and said that inaction threatens to “ruin the prospects of every future generation.”

Over the last 150 years the average global temperature has risen by 0.76 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and by more than twice that in the Arctic, eroding edges of the polar cap.

‘Sclerotic’ Governments

“Let’s finish this process in Copenhagen: Don’t take the pressure off,” Gore said. “It is wrong for this generation to destroy the habitability of our planet,” he said, calling political systems in developed countries “sclerotic.”

The former U.S. vice president shared the Peace Prize last year with the UN International Panel on Climate Change, a clearinghouse for scientific research on climate change.

The Copenhagen deal may set quantifiable emissions targets for rich countries and establish ways to help finance low-carbon technology. Poorer countries had urged industrialized nations to propose new emissions limits for 2020, a call answered only by the European Union and Norway.

“There is a huge gap of trust on that issue,” South African Environment Minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk said in an interview. “Developed countries undertook to come to Poznan with numbers and a number of them have not produced numbers -- Australia, Japan, Canada, Russia.”

Delegates didn’t blame the global financial crisis. “The scope of environmental problems is also grave,” said Chinese environment minister Zhenhua Xie. “Therefore we must turn the challenge into an opportunity.”

$1 Billion for Adapting

China and Brazil proposed curbing their own carbon-dioxide emissions. The South American country proposed slowing deforestation, which contributes a fifth of the world’s CO2 output.

The talks overran the scheduled close by nine hours, as rich and poor nations wrangled over an “adaptation fund” worth as much as $1 billion by 2012 for developing nations to adapt to climate change. The fund now can start paying out next year.

“We are disappointed at the slow progress, or even no progress, of this conference,” Su Wei, China’s deputy delegation chief, said today in an interview before the talks concluded. “We haven’t had solid progress on any of the substantive issues.”

A separate dispute wasn’t resolved over measures to increase money going into the adaptation fund. That frustrated poorer nations that asked for funds from carbon markets in the developed world. Delegates from India, the Maldives and Gabon were among those to complain at the conference’s closing meeting.

Timetable

“We’re very sorry that here we couldn’t hear the voice of the victims of climate change,” Colombian Environment Minister Juan Lozano Ramirez said. “We weren’t asking much.”

Agreements centered on the launch of formal talks for the new treaty: At least three two-week negotiation meetings will be held, starting in March, June and August, and a draft treaty must be in place by June, a UN document said. An additional meeting will be held if needed according to the timetable laid out by envoys.

“There are grounds for optimism the world can come together by the end of next year and reach a global agreement on Climate Change,” U.K. Secretary of state for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband said in an interview.

Delegates arriving at Europe’s fifth-biggest conference center for final day were greeted by an ice sculpture carved by development charity Oxfam proclaiming “delay kills.” Throughout the week, a number of human figures carved out of ice have steadily melted by the venue’s entrance next to life-sized human forms made from branches hugging trees.

‘Momentum Died Out’

“Momentum died out,” said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the Climate Action Network. “Things may be different next year when there’s a new U.S. administration.”

The U.S., represented by the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush, will take a new tack under President- Elect Barack Obama, who asked Democratic Senator John Kerry to report back to him from Poznan.

“Everyone is waiting to see what the U.S. will deliver,” Norway’s chief negotiator, Hanne Inger Bjurstrom, said. “No one wants to take on board commitments before they see the whole picture.”

Kerry told reporters in Poznan yesterday that the U.S. under Obama “is determined to lead” in the fight against climate change, while warning that a new deal won’t work without big developing nations like China, India, Mexico and Brazil. Some of those countries have taken steps on emissions limits.

China, Mexico, India

China set itself a nationally binding goal to reduce energy consumption per unit of economic output by 20 percent in 2010 from 2005. South Africa’s Van Schalkwyk said his country will peak its emissions by 2025, with cuts starting a decade later. And Mexican Environment Minister Juan Quesada said his nation intends to halve its emissions by 2050.

“Mexico doesn’t want to wait for others to act: we want to be an example,” Quesada told reporters in Poznan. “Until we solve the poverty problem in Mexico, we don’t want this voluntary goal to be legally binding.”

India has committed to keeping its emissions per person below those of industrialized nations. And Brazil on Dec. 1 announced a strategy to fight climate change, including provisions to more than halve deforestation by 2017.

Key to next year’s agreement will be finding common ground between China and U.S., the two largest emitters, said former Senator Tim Wirth, who led U.S. negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol. Binding targets, which were given only to industrialized countries in that 1997 agreement, should be left out of the negotiations for a treaty in Copenhagen, he said.

“If you start from caps you’ll be in a fight all the time,” Wirth, president of the UN Foundation, said in an interview in Poznan. “You want to get people discussing what they can agree on, and you put the things you’re going to fight about in the freezer for a while.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in Poznan, Poland, via amorales2@bloomberg.net; Jeremy van Loon via Poznan, Poland, at jvanloon@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 12, 2008 21:11 EST