LOS ANGELES: Barack Obama has sent an explicit message to international negotiators of a new global warming treaty that, under his administration, the US would move to greatly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, and "help lead the world toward a new era of global co-operation on climate change".

The videotaped message, played to a conference on climate change, electrified more than 700 delegates from 22 countries gathered to debate strategies for cutting planet-warming pollution.

"It looks as if we're about to have a climate emissions Terminator in Washington," panel moderator Steve Howard, the chief executive of the London-based non-profit the Climate Group, told the conference, convened by the California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Several European countries reportedly approached Mr Obama's transition team asking that he signal his intentions to diplomats who will gather in Poland next month to craft a successor to the 2005 Kyoto Protocol. Environmentalists have called publicly on the president-elect to attend the talks, despite the fact that the Bush Administration will be in charge of the US delegation.

In his message, Mr Obama pledged "a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change … That will start with a federal cap-and-trade system. We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020."

The pledge echoed Mr Obama's campaign positions, but tying them explicitly to the Poland talks "puts wings on the negotiations", said Annie Petsonk, International Counsel to the Environmental Defense Fund, a US advocacy group. "It sends a clear message … that the US will back cap-and-trade."

Mr Schwarzenegger also set a bold new target for his state to get a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

In his address, the president-elect said Mr Bush failed to show leadership on the issue of climate change. "That will change when I take office," he said.

Los Angeles Times, Guardian News & Media