Manado, Indonesia - A key global conference on oceans opened Monday in Indonesia with a warning that climate change will accelerate the destruction of already precious marine resources.

    Officials and ministers from more than 70 countries are meeting over five days in the port of Manado in a bid to influence crucial climate change talks in Denmark in December.

    It is being touted as the first time they have got together to consider how rising temperatures could impact sea levels and dwindling fish stocks.

    The environment, fisheries and resources ministers are expected to pass a joint declaration aimed at influencing the climate change talks in Copenhagen that will hammer out a successor agreement to the expiring Kyoto Protocol.

    "It is clear that our precious marine resources are under dire and increasing threat and that in many parts of the world climate change will accelerate their destruction," Indonesian Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Freddy Numberi said.

    Conference organisers say the meeting fills a much-overlooked gap in the global response to climate change, which has concentrated on cars, factories and forests while ignoring oceans.

    "Basically if you didn't have oceans you wouldn't have a climate ... that sort of link and understanding isn't being talked about in climate change discussions," United Nations Environment Programme marine unit head Jacqueline Alder told AFP.

    Surge in oil, gas and coal industry lobbying against Democratic leadership on "cap and trade" legislation.

    America's oil, gas and coal industry has increased its lobbying budget by 50%, with key players spending $44.5m in the first three months of this year in an intense effort to cut off support for Barack Obama's plan to build a clean energy economy.

    The spoiler campaign runs to hundreds of millions of dollars and involves industry front groups, lobbying firms, television, print and radio advertising, and donations to pivotal members of Congress. Its intention is to water down or kill off plans by the Democratic leadership to pass "cap and trade" legislation this year, which would place limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

    A defeat for the bill would have global consequences. The international community is depending on America, as the world's biggest per capita polluter, to set out a firm plan for getting off dirty fuels in the months before crucial UN negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

    Without such action, the chances of getting a deal that scientists say is vital to limiting dangerous climate change are much reduced.

    Those high stakes have intensified the fight for control over America's energy future. "There are an awful lot of people who have an awful lot to gain and lose and they have been acting accordingly," said Evan Tracey, founder of the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), who has tracked the proliferation of climate change ads.

    But it is an unequal contest. Liberal and environmental organisations, as well as the major corporations that support climate change legislation, say they are being vastly outspent by fossil fuel interests.

    Rep. Henry Waxman, fresh out of a White House meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, pushed back against those who have suggested climate change legislation might need to be put on the backburner.

    Waxman (D-Calif.) said his Energy and Commerce Committee expects to mark up a climate change bill by the Memorial Day recess and present a bill for Obama's signature by the end of the year. He also said Obama is fully supportive of that timetable.

    "We said we're moving it this year, and he didn't object," Waxman said following the meeting between members of his committee and Obama.

    White House press secretary Robert Gibbs bolstered Waxman's comments, stating in his press briefing that progress on a climate change deal was made during the meeting and that legislation is "clearly ... a major priority of the president's." Gibbs said Obama is "hoping to get something done this year."

    Questions about the momentum behind climate change have been raised as the administration and Congress have turned their sights to healthcare reform this summer. While Democrats generally agree on the need to move forward on healthcare reform, they are much more divided on climate change.

    Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of House leadership who is also the chairman of the House Democrats' campaign arm, has said the House should proceed cautiously on climate change. In an interview last month with The Hill, he suggested a vote might not take place this year.

    World will have exceeded 2050 safe carbon emissions limit by 2020, scientists say.

    The world will overshoot its long-term target on greenhouse gas emissions within two decades. A study has found that the average global temperature will rise above the threshold that could cause dangerous climate change during that time.

    Scientists have calculated that the world has already produced about a third of the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that could be emitted between 2000 and 2050 and still keep within a 2C rise in global average temperatures.

    At the current rate at which CO2 is emitted globally - which is increasing by 3 percent a year - countries will have exceeded their total limit of 1,000 billion tons within 20 years, which would be about 20 years earlier than planned under international obligations. "If we continue burning fossil fuels as we do, we will have exhausted the carbon budget in merely 20 years, and global warming will go well beyond 2C," said Malte Meinshausen of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who led the study, published in Nature.

    "Substantial reductions in global emissions have to begin soon - before 2020. If we wait longer, the required phase-out of carbon emissions will involve tremendous economic costs and technological challenges. We should not forget that a 2C global mean warming would take us far beyond the variations that Earth has experienced since we humans have been around."

    United Nations - The Obama administration, in a major environmental policy shift, is leaning toward asking 195 nations that ratified the U.N. ozone treaty to enact mandatory reductions in hydrofluorocarbons, according to U.S. officials and documents obtained by The Associated Press.

    "We're considering this as an option," Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Adora Andy said Wednesday, emphasizing that while a final decision has not been made it was accurate to describe this as the administration's "preferred option."

    The change - the first U.S.-proposed mandatory global cut in greenhouse gases - would transform the ozone treaty into a strong tool for fighting global warming.

    "Now it's going to be a climate treaty, with no ozone-depleting materials, if this goes forward," an EPA technical expert said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because a final decision is pending.

    The expert said the 21-year-old ozone treaty known as the Montreal Protocol created virtually the entire market for hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, so including them in the treaty would take care of a problem of its own making.

    It's uncertain how that would work in conjunction with the Kyoto Protocol, the world's climate treaty, which now regulates HFCs and was rejected by the Bush administration. Negotiations to replace Kyoto, which expires in 2012, are to be concluded in December in Denmark.

    The Montreal Protocol is widely viewed as one of the most successful environmental treaties because it essentially eliminated the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, blamed for damaging the ozone layer over Antarctica.