BALI (Bloomberg) -- Australian Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said rich nations had a responsibility to lend financial and technological support to help developing nations combat climate change.

“Australia recognizes the particular responsibility of developed countries to assist developing countries,' Rudd told the United Nations-sponsored climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia. ``In the form of technology transfer, in the form of financial incentives and in the form of support for adaptation. None of us can do it alone.”
An early UN draft version of negotiating guidelines called for industrialized countries to cut emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide by as much as 40 percent by 2020. The U.S., one of the world's two biggest emitters, opposes such specific targets in the guidelines.
Rudd earlier met UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, reversing the stance of former prime minister John Howard who was ousted at a Nov. 24 election. Australia will be a full member of the Kyoto Protocol by the end of March.
``We expect all developed countries to embrace a further set of binding emissions targets and we need this meeting at Bali to map out a process and timeline for this to happen,'' Rudd said, according to speech notes. ``We need developing countries to play their part -- with specific commitments for action.''
Australia's target under the Kyoto accord is to limit growth in greenhouse-gas emissions to an 8 percent increase above 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period.
--------------------- New Course
``Mr Rudd charts a new course for his country and it is a sincere commitment to address climate change,'' Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said during an address to the conference.
Labor has pledged to cut national emissions by 60 percent on 2000 levels by 2050, start a national emissions trading system by 2020 and have 20 percent of the nation's electricity to come from renewable sources such as the sun and wind by 2020.
``Climate change is now one of the greatest moral and economic challenges of our time,'' Rudd, 50, said. ``Climate change is no longer a distant threat; it is no longer a scientific theory. It is an emerging reality.''
Australia's total greenhouse-gas emissions were 559.1 million metric tons in 2005, unchanged from the previous year, the government said May 2. Emissions from power generation and transport rose by 1.3 percent from a year earlier.
``What we see today is the portent of things to come,'' said Rudd. ``Our inland rivers are dying, bushfires are more ferocious and more frequent, our unique natural wonders -- the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu, our rainforests -- are now at risk.'