Angela Merkel presses U.S. on climate in speech to Congress

By Noah Barkin and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the United States Tuesday to agree to binding climate goals, telling U.S. lawmakers in a speech to Congress there was "no time to lose" in the fight against global warming.

Speaking to a joint session of Congress days before the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, Merkel said it was time for the United States and Europe to unite to confront new barriers, from the economic crisis, to security and the environment.

"We have no time to lose," Merkel said, referring to a U.N. climate conference next month in Copenhagen, where countries will be trying to forge a successor to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

"We need an agreement on one objective -- global warming must not exceed two degrees Celsius," she said. "To achieve this, we need the readiness of all countries to accept internationally binding obligations."

U.S. climate legislation narrowly passed in the House of Representatives in June, but opposition largely from Republicans has held up a separate bill in the Senate and chances of a breakthrough before the end of the year are slim.

This is likely to prevent the Obama administration, which has taken a strong public stance on the climate issue, from agreeing concrete targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the December 7-18 Copenhagen summit.

Merkel, who began her second term in office last week, met with President Barack Obama at the White House before giving the first address to the U.S. Congress by a German leader since Konrad Adenauer in 1957.

Speaking to reporters during a picture-taking session in the Oval Office, Obama praised Merkel's leadership on climate change and warned of a "potential catastrophe" if countries allowed global warming to continue unabated.