Serious About Climate

"We need a successor arrangement for the time after 2012," Chancellor Merkel told the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) daily, adding that she was going to apply herself forcefully to bringing one about.

The Kyoto Protocol, which sets specific targets for reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions, expires at the end of 2012. With the notable exception of the United States, most of the world's industrialized countries have signed up to the treaty.

"Over the coming months, I want to contribute to it being possible to work out the new global framework for climate protection at the climate conference in Bali," Merkel said, referring to the UN-sponsored negotiations on a new global climate change agreement that will take place in December on the Indonesian island.

First-hand view

Merkel will travel with Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel to Greenland next week to talk with scientists and get a first-hand view of a melting glacier that could disappear as a result of global warming.

Shortly thereafter, the chancellor plans to take advantage of visits to China and Japan to further developments on a post-Kyoto agreement.

Both countries are important in the fight to minimize human damage to the climate: China as a fast-rising economic power and polluter and Japan, which will assume the G8 presidency from Germany next year.

At the June summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, the world's most industrialized countries agreed to begin talks by the end of the year on a treaty that could take the place of the Kyoto Protocol.

"I continue to take the arrangement from the G8 summit in Heiligendamm very seriously," Merkel told the SZ.