1:26pm UK, Friday December 18, 2009

Ruth Barnett and Graham Fitzgerald, Sky News Online

The chance to agree a global climate change deal “hangs in the balance”, Barack Obama has told world leaders in Copenhagen.

But the US President did not announce new commitments on emissions targets in his speech at the UN summit.

“The question before us is no longer the nature of the challenge; the question is our capacity to meet it,” he told delegates.

“For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest, as the world watches us today, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now and it hangs in the balance.”

He rebutted the claims of deniers and sceptics, stating: “This is not fiction, this is science.

“Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet.”

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Delegates at the talks have just hours before the official summit draws to a close.

They have drawn up a draft text for a global agreement which has been seen by a news agency.

“Deep cuts in global emissions are required,” it states, according to Reuters.

In the document, developing nations appear to agree to some international monitoring of emissions curbs in return for aid to help the poorest adapt.

The countries would also commit to “continuing negotiations” after the Copenhagen talks finish in order to adopt a treaty by the end of 2010.

Optimism initially rose on Thursday when the US announced it would back funding of $100bn a year to help developing countries fight warming.

But overnight talks stalled, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy naming China, India and Sudan as being responsible for the stalemate.

Almost 120 leaders are attending the last official day of the summit.

Some had hoped the US – the world’s biggest polluter – would set a more challenging emissions reduction target than its present 17% by 2020, which is equivalent to a 4% cut if measured on the same basis as European pledges.

EU leaders will also decide if they are prepared to up their offer of cutting emissions by 20% on 1990 levels by the end of the next decade to a higher 30%.

A leaked UN document suggests that even the most ambitious pledges currently on the table would lead to temperature rises of 3C, not the aimed-for 2C which would avert the worst ravages of climate change.

Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace International, said the document showed the likely deal in Copenhagen “would put at risk the very viability of our civilisation on Earth”.

He added world leaders had just one day to step up or they would be remembered as “the people who consigned the world to chaos”.