On Friday, delegates of 130 nations in a U.N. climate conference have agreed on a blueprint to combat global warming. The government delegates and scientists agreed on a summary of some 20 pages about the mounting risk of climate change with only a few years left to avert some of its worst impacts. The conference chaired by Rajendra Pachauri agreed on issues ranging from extinctions of species to rising sea levels.
According to an Australian climate scientist Bill Hare, this is the strongest report yet prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report will put pressure on the summit of the environment ministers next month in Bali to do more to combat global warming. The report will be formally presented today by U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Valencia.
The summary of the report has attributed human activities as the prime cause of increasing greenhouse gases and the immediate need to cut down burning of fossil fuel. The IPCC has estimated that greenhouse gases would rise to a peak by 2015. Global temperature is expected to rise to 2 to 2.4 Celsius over pre-industrial times. This would bring disastrous climate changes causing extinction of several species.
The Kyoto agreement requires 36 industrial nations to cut down greenhouses gases by at least 5 % below 1990 levels by 2008-12. However, US the largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the developing nations led by China are outside the Kyoto protocol.
Source:reuters
Image:environmental society
