Plea for action: US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at the UN Climate Change Conference in Lima. Photo: Reuters

Lima: US Secretary of State John Kerry has attempted to break a deadlock at the Lima climate change talks by urging countries to avoid being "bogged down in abstract debates".

In comments that will resonate domestically for the Abbott government, Mr Kerry urged countries to "do the maths" on the use of coal and oil.

"At the end of the day if nations do choose the energy sources of the past over the energy sources of the future, they will actually be missing out on the opportunities to build the kind of economy that will be the economy of the future," Mr Kerry said.

Mr Kerry flew into the Peruvian capital for a three-hour visit to plead with developing countries to act as the negotiations reached their penultimate day.

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The talks in Peru are gridlocked on two key issues - the actions to be taken by developing and developed nations, and the information countries will be required to provide next year to assess their pledges to cut carbon emissions. It is understood that China and India are holding out against demands to provide such detailed information and the process by which their pledges will be reviewed.

But Mr Kerry said in his speech in Lima that every nation had a responsibility to do its part and directly addressed developing nations' demands for developed countries to lead.

"Countries need to step up. And that means we need to come together around an ambitious climate agreement between now and the end of next year," Mr Kerry said. "I know the discussions can be tense and decisions are difficult and I know how angry some people are about the predicament that they have been put in by big nations that have benefited from industrialisation over a long period ... I know the debates over who should do what."

"But the fact is we simply don't have enough time to go back and forth about who has the responsibility to act. I know this is difficult for developing nations but we have to remember that today more than half of global emissions ... are coming from developing nations so it is imperative that they act too." 

Mr Kerry said the solution to tackling climate change lay in energy policy.

"Unlike some problems we face this problem has a ready-made solution provided by mankind that is staring us in the face," Mr Kerry said. "Coal and oil may be cheap ways to power the economy today in the near time. I urge you to do the real, actual far-reaching costs that come along with what some people think is the cheap alternative. For everyone who thinks they can't do the transition and invest in renewable energy do the real maths."

The speech was also clearly aimed at Republicans in the US Senate and vocal climate-change deniers in the United States. 

"The climate of science is science and it is screaming at us," Mr Kerry said.

"If the greenhouse effect is good enough to provide life itself then obviously logic suggests that it is also going to act like a greenhouse if you add more gasses and they are trapped and they heat up the Earth. This is pretty logical stuff and it is astounding to me that people in the United States and elsewhere doubt it.

"You don't need a PhD to see for yourself that the world is already changing, you just need to pay attention."