A UN conference agreed on Saturday to extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and launch a dialogue between Kyoto members and the United States on long-term action for tackling the greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change.
"We have completed our Montreal marathon, although the road before us remains so long. We are going to reconcile humanity with its planet," announced Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion, bringing down the gavel on a 13-day meeting high on drama and long on exhaustion.
The conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was tasked with charting the next steps in curbing 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 resounding show of support for a treaty that has been in deep trouble since March 2001 when the United States, the world's biggest carbon polluter, walked away from it.
The accord also gave a powerful boost to the fledgling market in carbon emissions, a key mechanism set up under Kyoto to encourage cuts, and troubled recently by fears of collapse beyond 2012.
And it 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.
"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.
The UNFCCC said more than 40 decisions were made during the Montreal meeting, which it described as "one of the most productive UN climate change conferences ever."
But it ended at dawn on Saturday, in an mixture of euphoria and exhaustion, after the United States battled on the "dialogue" question and Russia raised a last-minute roadblock on launching the post-2012 Kyoto talks. Both backed down, receiving in exchange a face-saving textual compromise.
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