German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that industrialized countries must be climate change role models by pursuing economically feasible climate policies that preserve jobs.
"When all the steel mills, aluminium factories and copper mills leave our country and go somewhere where environmental regulations aren't as strong, we haven't really notched any wins for climate change," she said in a video message to the UN Climate Change Conference currently taking place in Bonn.
Merkel added that the 2015 goal of limiting the world's rise in temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius would not be achieved in the current circumstances.
Responsibility for taking steps towards change lies in the hands of industrialized countries, she said, which must pursue innovations.
Merkel's comments came a day after former US vice president Al Gore said in Bonn that his compatriots in one of the world's most industrialized nations are committed to combatting climate change, even as the current administration has threatened to pull out of the Paris accord.
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg repeated that promise on Saturday, saying that there was nothing Washington could do to stop the American people from pursuing their climate change goals.
