U.S. President-elect Barack Obama should put global warming ahead of a domestic plan to cut carbon emissions, said Rajendra Pachauri, head of a Nobel Prize-winning United Nations panel of climate-change scientists.
``Irrespective of what he does domestically and when he does something, it's far more important for the U.S. to get engaged in the negotiations and help arrive at an agreement at Copenhagen,'' Pachauri said today in a telephone interview from New Delhi. ``That is clearly far more important than what they do domestically.''
Negotiators from almost 200 countries will meet next month at a UN conference in Poznan, Poland, to discuss ways to limit carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming. The talks are aimed at reaching an accord to replace the Kyoto protocol, which the U.S. has not signed, by next year at a Copenhagen conference.
The UN panel led by Pachauri, 68, has said global warming is causing Arctic ice to melt, rain to ...