Poland's new prime minister said Thursday her coal-reliant country would not rule out vetoing the high carbon cuts likely to be demanded by other European Union members.
"We will definitely be firmly stating our position," Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said in an interview with Poland's commercial broadcaster TVN24.
Asked if Poland would opt to exercise a veto in negotiations over carbon dioxide emission cuts, she said: "I'm not ruling it out."
Poland is heavily reliant on its coal supplies for electricity, a situation that has caused tensions with European partners concerned about missing clean air targets.
World leaders urged ambitious action to combat climate change at a UN summit last week, the first such event since the Copenhagen summit on climate change ended in disarray in 2009.
The UN is seeking to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels — but scientists say on current trends, the global average could reach twice that.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts in its latest report that temperatures will rise by between 0.3 and 4.8 degrees this century.
Depending on the level of warming, the outcome will likely worsen floods and drought, species extinctions and certain health perils, according to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment report.
Under the UN plan, a climate deal must be sealed in Paris at the end of 2015 and take effect from 2020.
But nations have been squabbling for more than two decades over sharing the burden of curbing emissions, which requires a costly shift away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.
The EU is the only main emitter that managed to reduce its figures last year, achieving a reduction of 1.8 percent due mostly to a weak economy and despite a rise in coal consumption by Finland, Germany and Poland, according to a Global Carbon Project report published last month.
