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Negotiators from 193 countries began nearly two-week long conference, the biggest on climate, to try and reach an agreement on combating the menace amidst hope that a deal was within reach with countries like India announcing voluntary reduction in carbon intensity, on Monday.
Leaders and scientists urged over 15,000 delegates gathered at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen to agree to immediate action to limit carbon emissions and raise billions of dollars in aid and technology to help save the planet.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen told the delegates that the world was looking to Copenhagen to safeguard the generations of tomorrow.
"For the next two weeks, Copenhagen will be Hopenhagen. By the end, we must be able to deliver back to the world what was granted us here today: hope for a better future," he said.
The urgency to act was underscored Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Rajendra Pachauri who said that global emissions would need to peak by 2015 for the world to stay below two degrees Celsius temperature rise.
"The costs of responding to climate change will become progressively higher as time goes on, therefore we must take action now," he said. Days ahead of the meeting, China and India announced significant reduction in their carbon intensity by 2020.
US President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao are among the 110 heads of state and government attending the final leg of the summit raising hopes for a stronger political resolve to tackle global warming.
"A deal is within reach, together we can accomplish what must be accomplished," Rasmussen said at the official opening of the UN conference.
UN climate chief Yvo de Boer had one word for the 193 countries represented at the summit.
"Deliver," he said.
A successful outcome of the conference hinges on the blurring of the lines of distrust between developed nations and emerging economies on curbing carbon emissions. Limiting carbon emissions is necessary to avoid more intense cyclones, heatwaves, floods, and possible loss of the Greenland ice sheet, which could mean a sea level rise of seven metres over centuries.
In Delhi, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said that India would not accept any legally binding emission cuts, but was ready to reduce the carbon intensity of its growth significantly through voluntary mitigation actions.
He also made it clear that any draft, which suggests that India's emissions should peak by a particular year would not be acceptable.
"This is simply not on our agenda."
Several draft treaties, including one submitted by India, Brazil, South Africa and China (BASIC) group, are in circulation among delegates here. The BASIC draft proposes 40 to 45 percent carbon emission cuts by developed nations while a controversial Danish proposal wants developing nations to commit a date by which their emissions will peak.
The opening of the conference was rocked by the controversy of hacked emails from a UK-based university, which suggested that climate scientists had exaggerated the evidence to highlight the threat of global warming.
Pachauri said there were rigorous checks on all research.
"The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges," he said.
According to Pachauri-led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an aggregate emission reduction by developed countries of between 25 percent and 40 percent over 1990 levels would be required by 2020 in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change, with global emissions falling by at least 50 percent by 2050.
Even under this scenario, there would be only a 50 percent chance of avoiding the most catastrophic consequences.
The first week of the conference will focus on refining the text of a draft treaty. But major decisions will await the arrival next week of environment ministers and the heads of state in the final days of the talks, which end December 18.
"The time for formal statements is over. The time for restating well-known positions is past," said de Boer.
Among those decisions is a proposed fund of $ 10 billion each year for the next three years to help poor countries create climate change strategies. After that, hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed every year to set the world on a new energy path and adapt to new climates.