Finance ministers meet in Bali on climate costs

By Gerard Wynn

JIMBARAN, Indonesia (Reuters) - Finance ministers met in Bali on Tuesday to debate how to fund the fight against climate change, the first such meeting on the fringes of annual U.N. climate talks.

The ministers, from about 20 nations, would debate issues ranging from the potential for carbon markets to help cut industrial emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels to incentives for people to put solar panels on the roof at home.

At the main talks, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was to arrive in his debut on the world stage a week after his new Labor government ratified the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, isolating the United States as the only developed nation outside the pact.

And Kyoto marks its 10th birthday on Tuesday -- it was agreed in the Japanese city of the same name on Dec. 11, 1997. U.N. backers of the pact plan to celebrate with a birthday cake.

Rudd is expected to formally hand over documents ratifying the Kyoto Protocol to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday.

The United States called on the meeting on Monday to drop any reference to scientific evidence that rich nations need to axe greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

That goal was part of a report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which collected the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore in Oslo.

Gore said it was "time to make peace with the planet".