FT.com / Brussels - UN takes first steps on road to new Kyoto

Poland: hero or villain on climate change? That will be the question for thousands of delegates at a series of crunch meetings on global warming in the next two weeks.

While many of the Polish government’s climate change experts will be in the western Polish city of Poznan, hosting the governments of more than 190 countries at UN talks on global warming, their colleagues will be hundreds of miles away in Brussels arguing for a serious weakening of the European Union’s climate change targets.
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Several congressmen and potential advisers close to Barack Obama, president-elect, plan to be in Poznan, including Senator John Kerry and Al Gore, the former vice-president.

The US delegation was booed on the conference floor last year.

This year, the unofficial delegation is likely to be fêted – while the Polish hosts may find themselves cast in the vacated role of villain.