Fresh talks between the world's environment ministers have been called for Berlin next month, after two weeks of talks broke up in stalemate Friday in Bonn, according to dpa. Thousands of officials attended the United Nations conference but failed to negotiate any progress on cutting carbon emissions. Next month's event, on July 3-4, will be jointly chaired by Germany and South Africa, which is to host the next climate summit this year in Durban. "We need options on the table," said Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Climate Conference secretariat in Bonn. There was no immediate word on which ministers would show up for the Berlin meeting at such short notice. All the meetings, whether at the level of experts, ministers or national leaders, are debating a new agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012 and has been ignored by several major economies. No consensus has emerged on what to do. Germany staged a similar ministerial meeting in May last year and achieved some modest diplomatic movement, but no more progress has been made since the Cancun climate summit in Mexico in December. Officials are already dubbing the planned Berlin meeting Petersburg II. The Durban summit is set to begin November 28. Scientists say current commitments fall far short of what is needed to achieve the agreed target: limiting average global warming by the end of this century to no more than 2 degrees celsius compared to the era before industrialization. Experts say that even if the Durban summit agrees on a Kyoto mark II agreement, there will not be enough time next year for all nations to ratify it, leaving the world without any binding climate treaty.
