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If global temperatures rise, billions will face water shortages Talks at the UN climate summit in Bali have continued past their scheduled end despite optimism that a compromise could be reached between the EU and US. The EU has been pressing for the final text to include a specific commitment that industrialised nations should cut their emissions by 25-40% by 2020. The US and Canada oppose firm cuts and neither side shows signs of giving way. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was returning to the talks from East Timor to assist negotiators. Everybody is working hard towards a result, and nobody wants to be the country that makes it fail Yvo de Boer, UN Q and A: Bali summit Send us your comments "I will go back to Bali tomorrow [Saturday] morning again to meet with the delegations... and engage myself in continuing further negotiations," he told a press briefing in the capital, Dili. The Indonesian hosts of the climate summit have been trying to bridge the gulf between the two sides with a text that reportedly excluded firm numerical targets for 2020, but did contain acceptances that greenhouse gas emissions need to be stabilised by the end of the next decade and that rich nations should play the major part in the effort. Neither the EU nor the US has formally accepted the compromise wording. Though senior players on both sides have suggested agreement is likely, it appears that many hours of further discussion may lie ahead. 'Good climate' "I think the situation is good, and the climate in the climate conference is good, and we will have success in the end," Germany's Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters. Planet Bali's parallel worlds The chief US negotiator Harlan Watson told the AFP news agency: "I'm always optimistic. I think we will have an agreement." And the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Yvo de Boer, who had earlier expressed concerns about the slow pace of talks, said it was unlikely that the meeting would end without an agreement. "It's possible but it won't happen," he said. "It won't happen because such public pressure has been built to deliver a result here, I do not believe ministers will be able to leave this conference without a political answer to the scientific message they have received. "Everybody is working hard towards a result, nobody wants to see it fail and nobody wants to be the country that makes it fail." Big emitters The talks are aiming to begin a process - the "Bali roadmap" - that will eventually lead to a treaty replacing the Kyoto Protocol when its current targets expire in 2012. The US, Canada and Japan have consistently opposed EU nations' demands for concrete targets to be included at this stage. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress in Bali Al Gore The US delegation in Bali has come under widespread criticism from environmental advocates. And on Thursday, EU ministers threatened to boycott a US-led climate summit for major emitters next month unless the Bush administration backed binding emissions targets. That summit, in Honolulu, will be the second gathering of the "major economies" or "big emitters" group, an initiative established by the Bush administration in September. It works on the basis of voluntary emissions targets, and is widely seen in environmental groups as a distraction from the UN process. Among those criticising the US was Nobel laureate and former Vice-President Al Gore, who spoke to a packed hall on Thursday. Mr Gore won loud applause from delegates as he said: "My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress in Bali." But the Nobel Peace Prize laureate also urged delegates not to give up, reminding them that the US presidential election in 2008 could herald a new approach in Washington. "Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now. You must anticipate that," he said. 'No more coal' plea to Brown The US is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and most parties recognise that climate change talks without it would be meaningless. Meanwhile, a leading US climate scientist told the BBC he was writing to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel asking them to block construction of coal-fired power stations. James Hansen says that Britain's early industrialisation means it has probably produced more greenhouse gases than any other nation.