Gro Harlem Brundtland on the Challenges to Curb Global Warming

Nearly 1,000 diplomats from around the world are meeting in Bonn Germany this week to draft a new global treaty to control greenhouse gases to replace the Kyoto Protocal which expires in 2012. The conference began on Monday, just days after the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its third major report on global warming. Earlier this year the panel declared that the warming of the earth's climate system in unequivocal and attributable to human activities. On Friday the group of 2,000 scientists said the means and technology to prevent global warming exist but that citizens of the world and governments must quickly take action.

* IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri.

Many environmental groups praised the IPCC's findings.

* Catherine Pearce, a climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth.

At the United Nations, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has named three prominent international figures to serve as special envoys on climate change. They are Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway; Ricardo Lagos, the former president of Chile; and Han Seung-soo, the former foreign minister of South Korea.

Gro Harlem Brundtland joins us on the phone. In 1981 she became Norway's first female Prime Minister. In 1983 she established and chaired the World Commission on Environment and Development. Known as the Brundtland Commission, the panel issued a landmark document outlining the political concept of social and economic sustainable development. In 1998 she was elected Director-General of the World Health Organization. She is a medical doctor and scientist by training.

* Gro Harlem Brundtland. Appointed as one of the United Nations’ three Special Envoys for Climate Change. Dr. Brundtland was Norway’s first woman Prime Minister. She is former Director-General of the World Health Organization.

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