Former US vice-president Al Gore on Thursday urged negotiators at the 14th UN Climate Change Conference to free themselves of outdated ways of looking at Planet Earth.

The climate campaigner and Nobel laureate said that the delegates, like everyone else, were vulnerable to misperceptions about the dangers facing the planet, misperceptions that might lead them to believe there was little urgency to fight climate change.

Gore made the comments after receiving an honorary doctorate from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, the Polish city where the UN climate change conference is taking place.

In his acceptance speech, he said quick action was needed to avoid catastrophic consequences.

"Many scientists now say we have less than 10 years within which to make a major change in the course of our civilisation, lest we lose the opportunity to reclaim the favourable climate balance that gave life to human civilisation and sustains life on this planet."

More than 10-thousand delegates and activists from almost 190 nations have gathered in Poznan to work on a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, and its a successor accord is due to be finished next December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

It will then be submitted to the countries for ratification.