U.N. climate chief hails U.S. greenhouse caps move

By David Fogarty

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - The U.N.'s top climate change official hailed on Thursday moves by a U.S. Senate committee to fight climate change by capping greenhouse gas emissions in the world's top carbon emitter.

"That's a very encouraging sign from the United States," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said at 190-nation U.N. talks in Bali, Indonesia on trying to widen action against global warming.

It is the second piece of good news at the conference after Australia's new government ratified the Kyoto Protocol on Monday, leaving the United States as the only major industrialized nation outside the pact.

President George W. Bush opposes mandatory caps on emissions.

"Things are going well here," de Boer said of the December 3-14 negotiations that are seeking ways to bind all nations, including the United States and developing nations such as China and India, more tightly into a fight against climate change.

In Washington, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved legislation outlining a cap-and-trade system for industry, power generators and transport. The bill is headed for debate in the full Senate.

"A parliament having a different opinion from a government is quite a common thing," de Boer said of opposition to Bush, a Republican. Many U.S. Democrats will visit Bali next week.

Bush has said Washington will support efforts to work out a new climate treaty by 2009, even though he says Kyoto would harm the U.S. economy and wrongly excludes goals for developing nations until 2012.  Continued...