Ministers from the industrial world, meeting in Paris today, must do more to tackle global warming, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has warned.
It said current policies will lead to a surge in greenhouse gas emissions.
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The call comes as the United States - the world's biggest polluter - prepares to unveil a new energy plan as an alternative to the Kyoto global accord aimed at cutting the pollutants blamed for a gradual warming of the world's climate.
Under current policies, OECD countries are likely to increase carbon dioxide emissions by a further one-third by 2020, said the OECD report, to be discussed by ministers from the 30-nation club at the one-day meeting.
The OECD report also highlighted other high-priority ecological dangers facing the world, including deforestation, over-fishing, the extinction of species and pollution of groundwater.
The Kyoto accord, which US President Mr George W. Bush rejects, targets an average 5 percent cut of greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
The United States has sought to counter dismay over its decision from environmentalists and those countries committed to the accord by saying it will put forward this week new ways to tackle the issue.
"This is not an issue we have put on the backburner," US Secretary of Energy Mr Spencer Abraham, attending a separate meeting of the OECD's International Energy Agency arm in Paris, told reporters today.
With US energy use expected to surge over the next two decades, he said the government would look increasingly to green power sources such as biomass and solar power as part of an environmentally sensitive energy policy.
Ecologists are deeply sceptical, however, noting that President Bush and Vice President Mr Dick Cheney are former oilmen.