Political leaders throughout the world have been put under intense pressure to start dealing with climate change, following yesterday's publication in Paris of a major UN scientific report saying the evidence for global warming was now "unequivocal". Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, reports from Paris.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that average world surface temperatures would rise by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, and possibly even more, if no measures were taken to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. And even if greenhouse gas emissions were capped, they predicted the world would experience more droughts, heatwaves and a slow gain in sea levels that could continue for more than 1,000 years.
President Chirac of France, who convened an Earth Conference for Global Ecological Governance at the same time as the report was launched, said a carbon tax should be imposed on those countries emitting most C02.
"We must build world environmental governance. In this area as in others, unilateralism leads nowhere . . . The UN Environment Organisation will act as the world's ecological conscience," he said.
But last night, the US sought to play down the urgency of the situation. President Bush's energy secretary, Sam Bodman, said there was a need for a "global discussion" about the problem.
Commenting on the report, he said: "We're very pleased with it. We're embracing it. We agree with it . . . Human activity is contributing to changes in our Earth's climate and that issue is no longer up for debate." But he repeated the Bush administration's opposition to any mandatory capping of greenhouse gas emissions.
The IPCC working group report, dealing with the scientific evidence for climate change, was hailed by Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, as a "critical milestone" that would focus attention on what the world was going to do about it.
Describing climate change as "the challenge of our century", he said the question mark hanging over it had now been removed. Ia reference to political leaders, he suggested that "anyone who risked taking no action will go down in history as being irresponsible".
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, also underlined the report's significance. "The signal from science is crystal clear and this makes it imperative that the political response is crystal clear and not open to equivocation."
The science underlying climate change, and human responsibility for it, was "no longer open for discussion", Mr de Boer declared, adding that global warming was "already happening and this calls for immediate action to start adapting to its adverse consequences".
He called for a new international agreement - in succession to the Kyoto Protocol - that would contain stronger greenhouse gas emissions caps for developed countries as well as incentives for developing countries, notably China and India, to reduce their emissions.
There is even talk of holding a summit in advance of the next climate change conference in December, to give a new impetus to talks on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But Mr de Boer said this would only happen if there was a groundswell of support for it. He described the EU's proposal for a 20 per cent cut in emissions by 2020 - and as much as 30 per cent, if other countries agreed to do the same - as a "European rallying call", and said this was the type of leadership that needed to be shown on the issue.