London, Dec 13: The former US vice-president Al Gore has urged world leaders to focus more on climate change and less on celebrities –in particular, O J Simpson, Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith.

Speaking to delegates at the United Nations Climate Change talks in Poland, Gore named the jailed ex-All American football player, the attention-seeking hotel heiress and the late sex symbol as distractions from the greatest crisis the world had ever faced.

Gore, who''s been meeting with the US President-elect Barack Obama, told delegates they could look forward to a new era of climate change policies under the new American President – and added that the election of Obama would mean that the United States would once more "engage vigorously" with the negotiating process, from which George W Bush withdrew.

"We have to overcome the paralysis that has prevented us from acting and focus clearly and unblinkingly on this crisis, rather than on spending so much time on O J Simpson, and Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith,” the Independent quoted him, as saying.

Gore called for the world to aim for a new and much more stringent target for cutting the greenhouse gas emissions which are causing global warming; the present target, of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, should be cut back to 350ppm, he said, a figure which the world has already passed. (ANI)