The United States has been resisting European calls for industrialized nations to target an upper limit for global warming of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), according to a draft summit text.

Car makers are lobbying the European Union to delay an agreed 2011 ban on climate-damaging chemicals in car air conditioners, a letter from auto industry group ACEA shows.

The move has aroused strong opposition from environmentalists and suppliers of greener engineering systems.

Arctic nations are promising to avoid new "Cold War" scrambles linked to climate change, but military activity is stirring in a polar region where a thaw may allow oil and gas exploration or new shipping routes.

The government's coal policy should not provide for coal export and open-mining method, experts and environmentalists said yesterday.

The policy should be drawn up in consultation with experts and others concerned, they added.

The suggestions came at a press conference on an 'environment-friendly, pro-people' coal policy at the Jatiya Press Club in the city.

The Petroleum Ministry has sought an explanation from Finance Ministry regarding replacement of petroleum development levy (PDL) with carbon surcharge on two petroleum products-JP-4 and JP-8. The government is currently charging Rs 3 per litre PDL on JP-4 and JP-8.

Climate talks made progress on Friday toward a new U.N. treaty to curb global warming but ended far short of calls by developing nations for the rich to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Four years of talks to widen the existing Kyoto Protocol have struggled to agree on how to share the cost of efforts to curb greenhouses gas mainly emitted by burning fossil fuels.

It seems unlikely that an agreement on the terms of the next climate treaty could be reached at the December-scheduled Copenhagen talks.

A new focus on the impact of farming on climate change could both curb carbon emissions and prod efforts to boost yields and rural incomes in developing countries, delegates told a U.N. climate conference.

THOUSANDS of officials from all over the world this week neared the end of two weeks of difficult talks in Bonn under the United Nations

Participants in a seminar on the World Environment Day said signs of climate change had begun to look ominous for Pakistan.