French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who’s never been known to exactly mince words, sounded the alarm over the fractious Copenhagen climate summit, which has been marked by sniping divides over who needs to take action and who needs to pay for it. More from Agence France-Presse:

“‘There is less than 24 hours. If we carry on like this, it will be a failure,’ Sarkozy warned angrily from the conference podium. ‘Failure at Copenhagen would catastrophic for all of us.’

The European Union called for an emergency meeting of ‘relevant players’ at the summit in a bid to break the deadlock.

More than 120 leaders, including US President Barack Obama, are heading for the summit on Friday, but none held out hope of a deal that could rescue the 12 days of negotiations.

‘Coming back with an empty agreement would be far worse than coming back empty-handed,’ said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs before Obama left Washington.

In Copenhagen, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused developing nations — without naming them — of backsliding on pledges to open their controls on carbon emissions to scrutiny.

The question is ‘a deal-breaker for us,’ she said.

China and India say they are willing to take voluntary measures to slow their surges in heat-trapping greenhouse-gas emissions.

But they are reluctant to accept tough international scrutiny and insist rich nations shoulder the main burden by accepting huge reduction targets.”

In other Copenhagen news, the global warming battle was rudely interrupted by, well, a freezin’ cold blizzard! There’s just something about fussing over global warming under four inches of snow.

And in the Copenhagen Dictator Watch, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blames capitalism for climate change, a cry echoed by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

(Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)