Small Pacific islands vulnerable to rising sea levels won a symbolic victory at the United Nations on Wednesday with the passage of a resolution recognizing climate change as a possible threat to security.

Dilip Kumar Jha / Mumbai June 03, 2009, 0:40 IST

Rich and poor countries criticized a first draft text of a new United Nations climate treaty Monday but grudgingly accepted it as the basis for six months of arduous negotiations.

The United States may soon take the mantle as the global leader on climate change in part because of its strong research and development on energy, said oil historian and analyst Daniel Yergin.

Carbon prices and the speculators who trade the underlying emissions permits should remain unregulated, despite wild volatility in the nascent market, a panel of emissions traders said on Friday.

Warm weather in 2007 helped the European Union towards its target of cutting global warming gases under the UN Kyoto Protocol for fighting climate change, but Spain, Italy and Ireland remained way off track.

Soaring transport emissions also offset many of the advances made by the 27-nation bloc, EU data showed on Friday, confirming a Reuters story last month.