NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Rich countries may act on  their own to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by developing a  carbon market they hope will lure in poor nations even if U.N.  climate talks get bogged down, experts said. 
 
Nearly 200 countries have been trying to reach an agreement  to replace the Kyoto Protocol on global warming with a December  deadline at a meeting in Copenhagen approaching.
  
But there remains a large rich-poor divide. Developing  countries want industrialized countries to make deep cuts in  greenhouse gas emissions in the international agreement.  Industrialized countries want poor countries to take on binding  commitments.  
To get past the differences, the rich world, including the  European Union and the United States, may form a carbon market  outside or parallel to the U.N. talks. Rapidly developing  countries like China may be inspired to join the market to sell  emissions offsets such as clean energy projects.
  
One reason such a development would be attractive “is  because countries like the United States, and other countries  like China, South Korea, and Mexico may very well do more on  their own domestic binding agreements than in a binding  international agreement,” said Nathaniel Keohane, director of  economic policy and analysis at the Environmental Defense  Fund.

The largest polluting countries have never agreed to  binding cuts in an international agreement. The United States  pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, which did not require big  developing emitters like India and China, the world’s top  greenhouse gas polluter, to make cuts.
  
A McKinsey study this year found that financing new energy  technology, efficiency and forestry projects to control global  warming may take more than $260 billion a year by 2030.

“There’s a growing consensus that in order to mobilize the  capital you have to bring in markets in a serious way,” Keohane  told an Environmental Finance conference on Thursday..
  
A global market could fit in easily with the climate bill  being debated in the U.S. Congress. The bill would allow U.S.  polluters to purchase up to 1 billion tons per year of  international offsets.
  
“Getting everyone to agree with everything (in Copenhagen)  is going to be very difficult,” said Peter Fusaro, a carbon  trade expert at Global Change Associates.
  
“So I don’t think the possibility of a market developing  outside of the process is out of whack at all. I think it’s  very possibly an outcome.”