Anti-warming roadmap unveiled
(Agencies)Updated: 2007-05-05 08:58
 A woman covers her face as she burns tires at a garbage dump at sunrise in order to recover the scrap metal inside to sell in Malabon, Metro Manila, on Friday. [Reuters]  |
The report, a summary of a more than 1,000-page study by a UN network of 2,000 scientists, showed the world has to make significant cuts in gas emissions through increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and vehicles, shifting from fossil to renewable fuels and reforming both the forestry and farming sectors.
The document made clear that the world has the technology and money to decisively act in time to avoid a sharp rise in temperatures that scientists say would wipe out species, raise ocean levels, wreak economic havoc and trigger droughts in some places and flooding in others.
Under the most stringent scenario, the report said the world must stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 445 parts per million by 2015 to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 C over preindustrial levels.
Delegates said the approval of the report should conclusively debunk arguments by skeptics that combating global warming was too costly, that it would stifle development in the world's poorer countries or that the temperature rise had gone too far for humankind to do anything about.
"If we continue doing what we are doing now, we are in deep trouble," cautioned Ogunlade Davidson, the co-chair of the group responsible for finalizing the report this week in Bangkok.
Delegates hailed the policy statement as a key advance toward battling global warming and setting the stage for an even stronger international agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse emissions when it expires in 2012.
"It's stunning in its brilliance and relevance," Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the group responsible for the report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said of the study.
The United States was pleased the report "highlights the importance of a portfolio of clean energy technologies consistent with our approach," the head of the US delegation, Harlan Watson, said.
China said rich countries must not keep clean energy technologies to themselves.
"It is something the developing countries have been asking for many years, but up till now it has not happened," Zhou Dadi, director of China's Energy Research Institute and a co-author of the report, said.
For many delegates, the strongest message was that reaching the lowest targets could be achieved by 2030 for less than 3 percent of the global gross domestic product.
Global economic growth has averaged almost 3 percent every year since 2000.
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