"We would like to limit climate change as it affects our economy and society," said Tom van Ierland (EDS: not spelled like the country), an EU expert on the environment, who was in Bangkok for a week-long session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's leading authority on global warming.

"There is a mutual, long-term benefit to act" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming, the expert said.

The 27-country EU, responsible for 14 percent of global emissions, aims to slash emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.

The region also launched the world's first emissions trading scheme in 2005, which covers nearly 50 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions.

The trading system, under which industrial polluters can buy and sell emissions quotas, is supposed to be the cornerstone of EU efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Van Ierland said he was hopeful that more countries would follow the EU's emission trading measure to tackle global warming.

"I think more and more countries, including the United States, will choose the emission trading scheme," he said.

The United States, the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter, has abandoned the 1995 Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce the emission of climate change-causing greenhouse gases, saying it would hurt the US economy.

On Monday, US President George W. Bush and European leaders agreed in Washington to define global warming as a serious problem requiring "urgent" action, but were deadlocked on what concrete remedies to apply.

The leaders said they had set up a US-EU conference on alternative-fuel standards to meet in Washington next year, and plans to take up climate change at the June G8 summit in Germany.

The United States is responsible for 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, with only some states like California taking initiatives to reduce pollution.

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