When 193 leaders of developed, developing, and poor countries meet for 12 days in Copenhagen (December 7th to 18th), the goal is to come up with a global agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, which the US did not sign, which expires in 2012.

For the past month, there has been speculation that the US would not only refuse to offer emission targets (the Climate Bill is still hung up in Congress) but that it was unlikely that President Barack Obama would attend. In late November, the executive secretary of the UN convention on climate change, Yvo de Boer, which sponsors the meeting, said that offers of emission cuts targets by all industrialized countries had come in, except from the United States.

But now a different picture has emerged. President Obama announced, he will attend and make a pledge of a provisional target for reduction of greenhouse gases which reflects the targets specified by legislation that passed the House in June, but is stalled in the Senate. Obama will tell the delegates at Copenhagen that the US intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions “in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.”

China and the US are the top emitters of gasses. In the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries were exempt, but the new agreement will include them. Following the US announcement, China’s Prime Minister Wen Jibao said that he would attend and offer China’s version of reducing emissions by cutting “carbon intensity” by 10 to 45 percent compared to 2005 levels. China has made significant investments in alternative energy projects which will help meet its target. Brazil has pledged cuts of 40 percent by 2020; Russia, 25 percent; South Korea, 30; Europe, 20 percent; and Japan, 25 percent.

Poor countries are expected to get funding to convert to more costly but cleaner technologies and technological assistance to adapt to the consequences of climate change – which has moved much faster than anyone had predicted. Glaciers are shrinking. Seas are rising. Unseasonable storms have produced higher rainfall than any on record. Other sections of the world are experiencing drought and wildfires that destroy crops and forests.

The need to tackle climate change has become imperative – a view that apparently is not shared by the US Senate, which has yet to pass a climate bill.

The Philippines, which is vulnerable to the ravages of Climate Change, has taken a strong stand on Climate Change and President Arroyo took the occasion of the recent East Asian Seas Congress held in Manila to rally neighbor nations on the importance of getting a new binding agreement at Copenhagen. A signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, Philippine businesses committed to cut emissions by 5 percent by 2012, and the Philippines is a regional leader in the development of renewable energy.

“An agreement is in reach,” the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, told the press. “We must seal a deal in Copenhagen.” In addition to pledges of developed countries to cut emissions, the Copenhagen meeting will address the needs of financing poor nations to combat climate change. Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed the creation of a $10-billion-a-year fund to help developing countries fight the effects of global warming.

Denmark’s Minister of Climate and Energy Connie Hedegaard will chair the 12-day Copenhagen conference.

Determined to reach an agreement, she said simply, “There is no Plan B.”