Reactions to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate change  have been quick. The report, which was released Friday and contains the UN's strongest conclusion yet that human activities are leading to global warming, made headlines around the world and provided new impetus for action on climate change.

On Saturday, 45 countries joined France in calling for a new international environmental organization to act on climate change. The new body could potentially have policing power to punish violators. However the United States, together with India and China, were conspicuously absent in their support -- despite US President George W. Bush's initiatives on climate change  in his recent State of the Union speech.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, too, is sending out mixed messages on climate change. In an interview Sunday with the mass-circulation weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag, she dismissed proposals for imposing speed limits on Germany's motorways, which currently have few speed limits. Instead, she encouraged German motorists to drive slower.

She is under fire for her government's threats to block an EU attempt to impose emissions reductions  on the automobile industry. The German car industry is one of the country's key industrial sectors and forms a powerful political lobby.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas called on Germany to increase its efforts to fight climate change, saying the country had so far failed to take the lead in combating global warming.

"If Germany bucks the trend, then the rest of Europe won't go along with it," Dimas told the paper. "And if Europe isn't going along with it, neither will the rest of the world."

Germany's newspapers were similarly critical of the chancellor's stance Monday.

The Financial Times Deutschland writes: "The findings of the UN report are not totally new -- forward-looking entrepreneurs had already been aware of them for years. Many of them work in Germany and make good money today selling environmentally friendly technologies around the world ... In this way Germany has achieved a leading position in this sector -- as the chancellor is always happy to point out.

"However Germany's image as ecological world champion is hard to reconcile with the stubbornness the domestic car industry shows when the European Union tries to reduce CO2 emissions from cars by imposing strict regulations. ... The contradiction is all too clear: On the one hand, the government supports, together with 45 other states, the idea of a new, more powerful UN environmental organization. On the other hand, they block the EU initiative which will oblige the car industry to make more efficient --and hence more environmentally friendly -- cars, with the killer argument about protecting jobs. ...

"One wonders what exactly these stubborn industrial policies are supposed to be protecting BMW, Porsche and Mercedes from -- from inventing technology which is as efficient as that made by Toyota and Honda? There's no doubt that the brakes can be put on global warming without carmakers in Munich and Stuttgart building energy-saving engines which are cheaper for the customer. But anyone who wants to strengthen the German auto industry should not risk that."

The left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes: "The current climate debate is characterized by schizophrenia, not rationality. Never before has the global scientific community given such drastic and unanimous warnings about the greenhouse effect. ... And never before have politicians, irrespective of party or national affiliations, warned so urgently that it's time to act. Except that as soon as things get concrete, none of that (desire to act) is left.

"The best example of that is Angela Merkel. Despite having declared climate protection to be a central task of her EU and G8 presidencies, she is at the same time carrying on an embarrassing fight with the European Commission to prevent real consequences for German industry. ...

"Protecting the environment is fine -- so long as it doesn't hurt the German economy. This double-dealing can only be stopped through binding international regulations. Every government has to stick by them, irrespective of which industry sectors have financed election campaigns and which lobbyists are exerting pressure.

"In order for that to work, not only is a new UN organization for environmental protection ... needed, so are instruments with which this organization can implement the necessary measures. ... With free trade, the World Trade Organization demonstrates that it is easily possible to enforce international rules with sanctions. ... The punishment that can be expected in the event of rules being broken need only be higher than the economic benefit (to be gained by breaking the rules). Even the German opponents of climate protection can't deny this rationality."

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes: "The academic debate about climate change is over. The political and moral discussions on the other hand are at a new stage -- hopefully a turning point. ...

"The result of the IPCC is a broad political consensus. It includes, without exception, all industrial states, states which sit not only on the prosecution benches but also on those of the defendants. ...

"Putting the IPCC verdict into practice could in reality offer the chance for a new start, a chance to organize the scattered UN environmental organizations and really bring them together. ... For this new beginning, what is needed is not more bureaucracy, but rather a new ecological vision."

In a guest editorial for the conservative daily Die Welt, David Miliband, the British Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, writes: "Since the Romanticism of the late 18th century, the people of Germany and the UK have shared a strong emotional link with their natural environment. In the 21st century we are natural partners in the drive against global warming.

"From its origins, concerned with aesthetics and the local environment, environmentalism has transformed into a global movement that shapes our economy and society. But the challenge confronting us from climate change is of a scale and severity we have never faced before. Unless action is taken urgently, the impact on our economies, on human life and on the environment could be catastrophic. ...

"I am convinced that the right policy approach can mean that climate security and energy security are mutually reinforcing. It is absolutely right that Germany has chosen to highlight this during its presidencies of the EU and G8.