"The United States will definitely join the next treaty," Gore said at a conference on global warming and rising oceans in the Faroe Islands. "The good news is that after the next (presidential, November 2008) elections, we will have a new politics."

The United States was the only industrialised economy not to sign up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, but a new deal has to be agreed in Copenhagen to cut greenhouse gas emissions when current commitments end in 2012.

Gore said everything required to make environmental progress was in place, "with a possible exception of political will".

"But we are free people," he added. "Political will is a renewable resource. Never before has our civilisation been at such risk," he told a gathering of transatlantic experts.

"A one-metre (yard) rise in sea-level worldwide would lead to one hundred million climate refugees. Six metres would mean 450 million," he added.

However, Gore said that if emissions were sufficiently cut and if enough people opt to use renewable energy sources, the world's economy would also benefit from more jobs.

Citing the need for China to play its part, he added that "the solution will come when people at the grassroots, mothers and fathers, think about their children (and) demand action".

"I think we are close to that point," he added.

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