UN climate talks to open, praise for "ambitious" Obama

By Gerard Wynn and Gabriela Baczynska

POZNAN, Poland, Dec 1 (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks open in Poland on Monday overshadowed by a global economic slowdown but with U.N. praise for "ambitious" goals by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for fighting global warming.

About 10,600 delegates from 186 governments, businesses and environmental groups meet in Poznan for the Dec 1-12 talks halfway through a two-year push to agree a new climate treaty in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

"It will be an incredible challenge" to reach such a complex accord within a year when the world is struggling with the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen will be among speakers at an opening ceremony on Monday, along with U.N. experts. WWF and Greenpeace activists plan protests outside the conference centre to urge more action.

De Boer praised Obama for saying that he would seek to cut U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases back to 1990 levels by 2020 as part of global action to avert more heatwaves, floods, droughts, more powerful storms and rising seas.

"It's ambitious," de Boer said of the target, speaking at a news conference on the eve of the talks. A rising U.S. population made the goal hard to reach.

U.S. emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars, are about 14 percent above 1990 levels. President George W. Bush's policies foresee a peak only in 2025.

"I expect Senator Obama to do what he plans to do: show leadership at the national level," de Boer said.