Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin declared that climate change already gripped his country's far north, blasted skeptics who brush off global warming and told the United States to respect the "global conscience" on this issue.

"The time is past to debate the impact of climate change. We no longer need to ask people to imagine its effects, for now we can see them," Martin told the conference, which is hosted by Canada.

"High in the Arctic, in our interior and along our coasts, the country we know is being transformed," said Martin. "Winters are growing milder, summers hotter and more severe, there is plant life where before there was none; there is water where before there was ice. Our permafrost is thawing, and releasing methane gas into the atmosphere."

He added: "Within short decades, the Northwest passage, the famously unnavigable thoroughfare of history, may be passable -- a striking and unsettling example of our delicate balance succumbing to untenable strain."

French President Jacques Chirac, in a video address, branded climate change "a brutal and urgent reality, the most serious threat weighing on the future of humanity."

"Even if scientific uncertainties remain, the accumulation of evidence, the visible changes to the environment, the multiplication of extreme (weather) events bear witness to a phenomenon that no-one can seriously contest any longer."

Ministers or their stand-ins from 189 countries and entities are meeting for three days at the climax to a 12-day gathering focused on the Kyoto Protocol, the troubled UN pact on curbing greenhouse gases.

They are under mounting pressure to come up with a commitment for making deeper emissions cuts when the treaty's present pledges run out in 2012.

But a rift between the United States and Europe is dogging efforts to decide how to move forward.

The conference is taking place under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the fruit of the 1992 Rio Summit.

Kyoto, its key offshoot, sets targets for industrialised countries to reduce carbon-based gases that act like an invisible blanket, trapping the Sun's heat and driving up the planet's surface temperature.

The protocol took effect last February after a long and agonising gestation marked notably by the walkout of the United States -- the world's number one polluter -- in 2001.

In the present Kyoto format, only developed countries are required to cut pollutions as compared to a 1990 benchmark.

Negotiating the post-2012 commitment period will take several years, so countries are using Montreal to stake out their positions on how -- and even whether -- to insist on binding cuts in emissions and involve emerging economies in the cap system.

The United States has angrily warned off anyone attempting to coax it back into legally binding caps. President George W. Bush, who in the past questioned the very evidence for global warming, claims a voluntary approach, helped by new, cleaner technology, will suffice.

That notion is scorned in Europe, the world's most environmentally sensitive region, where governments are willing to endorse tougher regulations.

"These technological leaps will not be a miracle solution and the hope in future progress cannot exonerate us from our present responsibilities," Chirac said.

Chirac added that the post-2012 Kyoto format had to embrace big polluters, whether rich or developing, in its targeted emissions cut.

"We have to stabilise and then halve global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050," he said.

Martin made an attack on US isolationism and warned no-one was immune from climate change.

"To all those countries that are still reticent, including the United States, I want to say this: We have a global conscience and now is time to listen to that conscience," he told a press conference.

"It's time to join with the international community and get down to work, to show leadership, and especially it's the time to take action because only together can we make real and lasting progress."

Many scientists say the first effects of climate change are already kicking in, with the melting of Alpine and Himalayan glaciers and erosion of Arctic and Antarctic icesheets.

They also speculate that this year's unprecedented season of Atlantic storms, spearheaded by Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans, was caused by global warming.

Tackling the pollution is a big headache because of the economic cost in requiring greater fuel efficiency and switching to cleaner energy sources.

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