UN/FILE: An international team of scientists urges the world to act immediately to prevent climate change from becoming catastrophic.

Declaring the global warming debate over and using the United Nations as a platform, a team of scientists have urged the nations of the world to take immediate steps to offset the consequences of climate change. The team emphasised the need to undertake more research on alternative source of energy as well as for more regional planning to look after environmental refugees. A team of scientists came together at the United Nations on Tuesday (February 27) to call upon the world to take the effects of climate change more seriously, appealing to nations for a renewed effort to take positive steps in dealing with environmental concerns. The international community needs to take stronger steps to cut the pace of global warming, adapt to the climate changes that have already taken place and ensure development can be sustained throughout the process, the scientists said in a report released at the United Nations. The report is a logical next step after the February 2 release of a much-heralded document by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Paris, which stated that global warming is real and human activities caused much of it over the past half-century. The earlier report was prohibited from making policy recommendations; the current one, funded by the non-profit U.N. Foundation and Sigma Xi scientific society, centres on just such recommendations. While the recommendations are global, certain specific items are sure to affect the United States, Holdren said in a telephone interview before the report's formal release. For example, the scientists said no country should build any traditional coal-burning power plants -- big emitters of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide -- unless they are designed to be able to capture and bury the carbon dioxide they emit. The United States, which emits about 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide, relies heavily on coal-fired power plants. The scientists also emphasised that increasingly, many floods and droughts could be linked to climate change and the effects of climate change would often have a bigger impact on developing countries like China and India. Apart from recommending regional preparedness in dealing with environmental disasters, another recommendation urges improved energy efficiency for vehicles, homes, commercial buildings and in industry, to save money, cut dependence on oil and reduces the balance of payments to pay for oil imports. Biofuels, such as the ethanol advocated by the Bush administration, should increasingly replace oil in transport, the report said. They also said that more research needs to be done on nuclear and solar energy. The scientists considered nuclear power as a carbon-free option, but said this energy source must address the problem of disposal of radioactive waste and break the link between nuclear technology and weapons proliferation. Global investment in advanced energy technology should be tripled or quadrupled, the report said. This and the other recommendations are aimed at cutting global warming but also providing economic opportunity and new jobs.

ITN Source | February 28, 2007

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