With the heat-trapping carbon at record levels in the atmosphere, UN climate negotiations opened in Durban on November 28, 2011, with the pressure building to salvage the only treaty, Kyoto Protocol.

The talks face a looming one-year deadline with the expiry due in next December.

Canada, joined by Japan and Russia, said last year it will not accept new commitments, and US Chief delegate Jonathan Pershing said the United States, which shunned Kyoto as unfair, would accept legally binding emissions limits in the future as long as all major emitters took on equal legal obligations.