John McCain vowed yesterday to put the US at the heart of international efforts to tackle global warming, proposing aggressive targets to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions and the creation of a cap-and-trade system to encourage investment in green technology.

Republican John McCain, differing sharply with President George W. Bush, said on Monday he would pursue mandatory US curbs on greenhouse gas emissions if he wins the White House in November. The Arizona senator vowed to take the lead in combating global climate change, seek international accords to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and offer an incentive system to make businesses in the United States cleaner.

Russia may decide to hold onto its greenhouse gas emissions rights under the Kyoto Protocol, at least until the details of a successor treaty are clearer, a Russian expert said. The United Nations' Kyoto Protocol allows industrialised countries to meet greenhouse gas targets by buying emissions rights from each other or from clean energy projects in developing nations.

Japan, the world's fifth biggest polluter, will announce a target next month for cutting domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80 percent from current levels by 2050, media reported on Sunday. The target, more ambitious than Japan's current proposal for the world to halve emissions by 2050, is aimed at boosting its leadership in climate talks as host of the Group of Eight summit in July, the Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun newspapers said.

If anyone had doubts about the importance of the voluntary carbon market they would certainly have been overcome by the announcement last month by Merrill Lynch of a new carbon offset service to assist businesses to reduce emissions through voluntary offsets. In partnership with ICF International, Merrill Lynch's new Green and Gold initiative is the latest in a series of moves by major financial institutions to position themselves in a market valued by Abyd Karmail, Merrill Lynch's managing director and global head of carbon emissions at over of $70 billion.

The global carbon market more than doubled in value in 2007 to $64 billion, but that masked slow growth in actual greenhouse gas emissions cuts, the World Bank's carbon finance unit said on Wednesday. Climate change policies which limit the production of planet-heating gases in rich countries are driving booming global demand for emissions permits. One way industrialised nations can buy carbon offsets is by funding greenhouse gas emissions cuts in developing nations, through a UN-led scheme under the Kyoto Protocol, but growth in value is outstripping emissions cuts.

Canada will be investigated on suspicion of violating rules for registering greenhouse gases that are the mainstay of a UN-led fight against global warming, official documents show. Canada played down the news, saying it was taking quick steps to ensure it complied by the rules. Ottawa could be suspended from rights to trade carbon dioxide if found to be in breach of the rules by the enforcement branch of the UN's Kyoto Protocol. Greece was suspended last month, the first state to face such a sanction.

The world's poorest and most vulnerable children are being hit hardest by the impact of climate change, according to a new report from UNICEF UK. Published exactly 10 years after the UK signed the Kyoto Protocol, Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility called for immediate action from Government to make children a priority in the climate change agenda. It described how children, especially in Africa and Asia, face increased violence and disease, and scarcer food and clean water, causing up to an extra 160,000 deaths a year.

The head of the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. climate panel is urging Japan to exercise leadership during the upcoming Group of Eight summit in setting midterm and long-term global targets to cut carbon emissions. "I would feel very happy if in the G8 meeting all the leaders agree that by 2020 the world has to cut its emissions by X percent and by 2050 it has to cut them by Y percent," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in a recent interview in Tokyo.

The world can reach a significant new climate change pact by the end of 2009 if current talks keep up their momentum, the head of the United Nations climate panel said on Sunday. The United Nations began negotiations on a sweeping new pact in March after governments agreed last year to work out a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol by the end of next year.