"With Congress moving slowly on a measure to curb industrial greenhouse gas emissions, the United States may find itself with little sway at the coming international conference to construct a new pact aimed at easing global warming.

In less than three months, 120 countries convene in Copenhagen for action on a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

That meeting, a U.N. summit on climate change next week and the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh days later are pressuring and imposing deadlines on Congress and the Obama administration, which has made work against climate change a top agenda issue."

Steven R. Hurst reports for the Associated Press September 18, 2009. [2]