The FINANCIAL — Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, has warned of 'catastrophe' for the planet if world leaders fail to agree a new global deal on reducing greenhouse emissions. British PM is calling other national leaders to personally attend a climate summit in Denmark later this year.
Amid fears that momentum for agreement at the December meeting is stalling, Brown urged countries to compromise with one another to avoid "the catastrophe of unchecked climate change," according to AP. The British leader plans to attend the Copenhagen summit, intended to cap two years of negotiations on a global climate change treaty, and has called on fellow leaders to join him. So far, few have said they will go.
The same source informs that Brown told a meeting of the world's biggest economies in London that efforts to agree on a new global pact to tackle climate change are a historic test of international cooperation.
Brown said negotiators had 50 days to save the world from global warming and break the "impasse", BBC reported. He told the Major Economies Forum (MEF) in London, which brings together 17 of the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitting countries, there was "no plan B". World delegations meet in Copenhagen in December for talks on a new treaty.
Leaders need to find up to 5 billion tons of additional greenhouse-gas cuts by 2020 to help limit temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), Brown said, as Bloomberg wrote. Citing estimates by the government’s former chief economist, Nicholas Stern, Brown said the current world emissions of 50 billion tons need to be reduced further to rein in global warming since industrialized times.
Addressing officials in London from the world’s 17 biggest polluters, including the U.S., China and India, Brown said current emissions reduction pledges would lead to 46 billion tons to 49 billion tons of output of the gases in 2020, the same source informs. That means more action is needed to ensure a global agreement to be reached in Copenhagen in December is effective, he said. “We are looking for a further 4 to 5 gigatons (billion tons),” Brown said today in a televised address. “I am convinced we can achieve this through a combination of efforts in developed countries, in developing countries and in global reductions in aviation and maritime emissions.”
Wealthy nations are seeking broad emissions cuts from all countries in a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol on carbon dioxide emissions, AP reported. Developing countries say industrialized nations should carry most of the burden, and complain that tough limits on emissions are likely to hamper their economic growth.
Brown says both the industrialized and developing world can take advantage of business opportunities in developing new energy sources and improving energy efficiency, according to the same source. "This is a test of our ability to work together as nations facing common challenges in the new global era," Brown said in a speech to the MEF. "We have shown this year in our approach to the global economic crisis how cooperation from all can benefit each. Now, we must apply the same resolve and urgency to the climate crisis also facing us."
The MEF was launched by US President Barack Obama earlier this year on the back of an initiative by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to speed up the search for common ground among the most polluting world economies, AFP informs. It then intends to hand this consensus for approval by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the sprawling 192-nation global arena.
The December 7-18 UN climate summit in the Danish capital will see nations attempt to hammer out a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, according to the same source. Brown was to say he thought a deal at Copenhagen is possible, but negotiators are not moving fast enough. Instead, "leaders must engage directly to break the impasse. We cannot compromise with the Earth," he was to say. "We can not compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change; so we must compromise with one another.
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