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Key players are a long way from reaching a consensus as the first week of the conference closes, however. U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson refused to budge from his country's official stance of opposing mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, even as the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a bill to cut U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050 on Wednesday.
The United States, blamed as the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has stubbornly resisted calls for stricter limits on emissions that would put a huge strain on the country's economy.
When newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd vowed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol -- a change from previous policy that would require Australia to reduce emissions in the range of 25-40 percent by 2020 -- opposition leader Brendon Nelson slammed it as a move that would devastate the Australian economy and damage the nation. Nelson called on the prime minister to do the necessary homework before committing to a target.
"It will have serious consequences for electricity bills and many other burdens borne by working families in day-to-day life and pensioners," Nelson told reporters in Canberra.
However, the scientists gathered in Bali feel the time is past when governments can afford to pursue economic interests at the expense of environmental degradation. More than 200 climate researchers and scientists signed the "Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists" Thursday, warning government negotiators at the conference of the need to act immediately to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The consensus document, compiled by several hundred climate scientists and prepared under the auspices of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, says the climate is surely warming rapidly and they are 90 percent sure that this is due to human activity. The document states that governments have a window of only 10-15 years for global emissions to peak and decline, and at the least, a 50 percent reduction goal must be achieved by 2050.
The world may have as little as 10 years to start reversing the global rise in emissions, the scientists said. Greenhouse gas concentrations should not exceed 450 parts per million, measured in carbon dioxide equivalents, if global warming is to be limited to 2 degrees Celsius.
The 2-degree C goal is the level formally adopted by the European Union and a number of other countries. "As scientists, we urge the negotiators to reach an agreement that takes these targets as a minimum requirement for a fair and effective global climate agreement," the declaration read.
However, some scientists reportedly declined to sign the declaration on the grounds that the targets are too modest and that further reductions in emissions are necessary.
Environmentalists have also issued their own decrees, warnings and proposed solutions on the potential consequences of global warming.
The World Wide Fund for Nature's new research on climate solutions says that governments have five years left to agree on necessary policy changes and measures crucial to start an energy revolution and stop climate change.
"The solutions are at hand and Bali must agree on decisive action inspired by the WWF roadmap to ensure that climate pollution peaks and declines within 10 years," Liam Salter, head of the climate program at WWF in Hong Kong, said upon the release last week of the group's report, "Climate Solutions: WWF's Vision for 2050." Salter believes that the economic costs will increase dramatically if the process of implementing solutions is delayed beyond five years.
Agrofuels or biofuels have been hailed as a viable alternative energy source by some researchers. However, green groups such as Friends of the Earth have rejected this approach, warning that the draining of peat lands and cutting down of tropical forests to cultivate grains for fuel would release far greater amounts of amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than would be saved by resorting to agrofuels.
"Ninety percent of palm oil -- which is used in thousands of everyday products, from margarine and bread to lipstick and soap -- comes from Indonesia and Malaysia. The palm oil industry has accelerated deforestation, driving indigenous peoples off their land. The demand for palm oil for agrofuel use could sound the death knell for our forests," said Farah Sofa, deputy director of WALHI/ Friends of the Earth Indonesia.
In the coming days, negotiating groups will move behind closed doors in Bali to discuss a wide range of issues including the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, processes to cap and reduce emissions after 2012, ways of adapting to climate changes, the transfer of clean technology to developing nations and carbon-trading mechanisms.
However, beneath the heated frenzy of climate change vocalists lies a thin veil of skepticism as to whether the conference will yield adequate commitment to the goals to effectively tackle climate change.
U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, due in Bali this weekend, has urged world leaders at the conference to negotiate a new deal to tackle global warming. Ban has voiced hope that the conference will yield a "roadmap to a better future."
Hope is also what Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, who is president of the conference, seems to be clinging to. "The Bali conference will not deliver a fully negotiated climate change deal," he said at the opening session on Monday. "However, whilst the launch of negotiations and a clear deadline of 2009 to end the negotiations would constitute a breakthrough, anything short of that would constitute a failure."
The two-week conference, which is the thirteenth meeting of the 192 parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the third meeting of the 176 parties to the Kyoto Protocol, is expected to yield a format for negotiations on a climate change deal beyond 2012, the year the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires.
Flags representing the nations of the visiting delegations flutter cheerfully along the streets of Bali, creating a celebratory mood. But Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the conference, feels it is too early to celebrate.
"The outcome of this conference will, to a degree, determine whether Bali -- and other vulnerable places -- are destined to become a lost paradise, or not. If the outcome of this conference keeps pace with the many positive political signals of the past year, we are on a good road to preventing a lost paradise."
