Davos: Denmark's Prime Minister said today that the United States, China and India must agree to cut their carbon emissions in any successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Japan's leader offered them a bold strategy for doing it.

Climate change returned to the fore at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, where Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda proposed a 2020 deadline for countries to boost their energy efficiency by 30 per cent.

Fukuda said the US, China and India alone can cut an amount of CO2 emissions equal to the total amount Japan releases into the atmosphere each year, if only they match his country's efficiency levels for power plants.

"The most efficient use of energy is now an obligation upon humanity," Fukuda told the meeting of 2,500 business and political leaders. "The whole world must make efforts to maximize the improvement of energy efficiency."

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country will host a key climate meeting in December 2009, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the goal of the meeting was clear: getting the US, China and India to participate in the follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The exemption of developing nations from the Kyoto Protocol's mandatory caps has long been a key complaint of American opponents to the UN climate treaty process. In 2001, US President George W Bush "abandoned" the treaty.

"All the main emitters of greenhouse gases should participate in this climate agreement, including the United States, China and India," Fogh Rasmussen said. "That will be the real challenge. To get all main emitters on board."

Source : PTI