WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice welcomed participants to a conference on climate change, calling on them to work together on the climate issue.
Recognizing the United States is both "a major economy and a major emitter," Rice said the two-day Washington conference's purpose "is to ensure that all of us are working pragmatically toward a common purpose, to contribute to a new international framework for addressing climate change" and help all nations "fulfill their responsibilities under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change."
The conference focuses on three areas, Rice said, with a long-term goal for greenhouse gas reduction "in a time frame that allows the environment to adapt and in a way that ensures continued global economic development."
Other goals are establishment of mid-term national targets and programs to reach broader goal and working with private industry "to develop and bring to market new energy technologies that not only pose no risk to economic growth but can actually accelerate it."
"Every country will make its own decisions, reflecting its own needs and its own interests, its own sources of energy and its own domestic environment," Rice said.
