Time short to tackle global warming: UN

CanWest News Service
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

OTTAWA - Politicians from around the globe have little time left to accept the scientific evidence that humans are causing dangerous changes to the climate and act to put a stop to it, the top United Nations official warned Tuesday.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a summit next Monday must lay the groundwork for an effective political response to the latest peer-reviewed research on the impact of increasing concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

"Science has made it quite clear, and we have been feeling the impact of global warming -- already clearly felt," Ban told reporters at the UN. "We have resources and we have technologies; the only thing lacking is political will. Before it is too late, we must take action."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international network of government officials and climate experts from around the world, has issued a series of reports in recent months that found "unequivocal" evidence that the planet is getting hotter and that human activity is "very likely" the cause. The reports warned that some of the effects, such as disappearing species, rising seas, melting ice, increasing extreme weather events and droughts, are already being observed and would get much worse by the end of the century.

The panel "has given us clear proof of the science, the impacts and options for responding," Ban said. "The world's peoples are now looking for their governments to act."

More than 80 world leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President George W. Bush, are scheduled to address the special UN session next week, organized by Ban to boost global negotiations on a new climate change agreement that would replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.

Although the international Kyoto agreement was the first to set binding targets on industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels, developing countries such as China and India do not have legally binding targets under the deal. The U.S. and Australia walked away and refused to ratify the protocol.

Bush has also invited leaders from major economies to participate in a separate meeting to discuss the issue at the end of next week in Washington, D.C.