Delegates from the world's biggest greenhouse gas-producing nations yesterday worked on ways to best combat global climate change.

Phil Woolas, Britain's environment minister, said the closed-door talks addressed whether nations should compile a series of national commitments to reduce emissions. Another option, he said at a break in the meeting, is to set a worldwide long-term goal and then divide the emissions reductions needed among different countries.

Delegates from 16 nations, plus the EU and the U.N., gathered for the U.S.-sponsored meeting also discussed what temperature they'd like the Earth to be, Woolas said.

"We really are engaged in pretty intensive talks about what does each other mean, what does each other want, what are the fears, what are the suspicions," Woolas said before the meeting had concluded.

Delegates say they'd like the Hawai'i talks to advise negotiators who will craft the 2009 roadmap for fighting global warming.

Woolas said the U.S. and other countries were showing more flexibility at the Hawai'i conference than at earlier climate change meetings, including the one in Washington at which many restated long-expressed positions.

As a result Woolas said he was confident the Hawai'i talks would contribute to a two-year process launched at global climate change talks in Bali, Indonesia, in December.

"There's a realization that we have to get an agreement; otherwise we're all going to drown," Woolas said.

Nations represented at the conference account for 80 percent of emissions which scientists say contribute to global warming. In addition to the U.S. and Britain, they include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea, and South Africa.

President Bush had hosted the first round of major economies talks in Washington in September. The EU had threatened to withdraw from the meetings which some environmentalists have viewed as a threat to the U.N. climate treaty process, but European nations agreed to participate after the talks in Bali resulted in a blueprint for fighting global warming by 2009.

The U.S. has been seeking voluntary pledges from nations for specific cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. delegate Jim Connaughton, White House environmental chief, said on Wednesday he hoped countries could help draft targets for industries to meet in the global effort.

Daniel Price, assistant to President Bush for international economic affairs, said at a break in yesterday's talks that the discussions "have been positive and constructive."

Environmentalists have voiced skepticism about what the Hawai'i talks would accomplish given the U.S. opposition to mandatory national reduction targets of the kind agreed to under the Kyoto Protocol a decade ago.

The EU has proposed cutting its overall emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels — or 14 percent from 2005.

The process launched in Bali, in addition to setting goals for industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, will outline ways to help developing countries cut their emissions and adapt to rising temperatures.