(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-14 10:16

The EU threatened on Thursday to pull out of a US meeting of major greenhouse gas emitters next month.

"If we would have a failure in Bali it would be meaningless to have a major economies' meeting" in the United States, Humberto Rosa, Portugal's Secretary of State for Environment, said in Bali. Portugal holds the rotating EU presidency.

Washington, long at odds with many of its Western allies on climate policies, has called a meeting of 17 nations, including China, Russia and India, in Hawaii in late January to discuss long-term curbs on greenhouse gases.

Despite opposition to Kyoto, the United States plans to join a new treaty, meant to be agreed in Copenhagen in late 2009 with participation of developing nations led by China and India.

Former US Vice President Al Gore, fresh from collecting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, won rapturous applause on the sidelines by adding his voice to criticisms of Washington.

"My own country the United States is principally responsible for obstructing progress in Bali," he said.

The United Nations says a Kyoto successor has to be in place in two years to give governments time to ratify the new deal by the end of 2012 and to give markets clear guidelines on how to make investments in clean energy technology.

In a further sign the planet is heating up, the 11 warmest years on record have all occurred in the past 13 years, with 2007 set to be the seventh hottest since 1950, Britain's Met Office and the University of East Anglia said on Thursday.

Another study, to be published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, says that in less than 50 years, oceans might be too acidic for coral reefs to grow because of carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels by humans.

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