SINGAPORE/OSLO: Hopes for stronger world action in 2010 to curb climate change have dimmed after the election of a US Republican senator opposed to caps on carbon emissions, experts said on Wednesday.

Backers of the existing international Kyoto Protocol, which obliges all industrialized nations except the United States to cut emissions until 2012, will be more reluctant to take on tougher new goals for 2020 unless Washington also joins in.

UN climate talks in Mexico in November are meant to build on a weak "Copenhagen Accord" worked out last month by nations including the United States that sets a goal of limiting warming to no more than two Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times.