World must ramp up anti-catastrophe efforts

World must ramp up anti-catastrophe efforts



Feb 2007 - In order to 
avoid climate change becoming "a catastrophe," the world must 
ramp up efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and prepare to 
deal with more weather-related disasters and to help climate 
change refugees, an international panel of experts told the 
United Nations today. 
The panel's 166-page report outlines a strategy for preventing 
unmanageable climate changes and adapting to unavoidable ones, 
urging the international community to commit to the goal of 
trying to hold global temperature increases to 2.5 degrees 
Celsius. 
"Doing so would require very rapid success in reducing 
emissions of methane and black soot worldwide, and it would 
require that global carbon dioxide emissions level off by 2015 
or 2020 at not much above their current amount, before 
beginning a decline to no more than a third of that level by 
2100," the report said. "But the challenge of halting climate 
change is one to which civilization must rise." 
Severe drought is only one likely consequence of climate 
change.  
Failure to meet that target, the report said, will likely 
bring "intolerable impacts on human-welling being," by causing 
adverse impacts to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, the 
availability of fresh water, the geography of disease and the 
livability of human settlements. 
The Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable 
Development, consisting of 18 experts from 11 nations, was 
asked to make its recommendations by the United Nations. 
The report, prepared for the upcoming meeting of the UN's 
Commission on Sustainable Development, took two years to 
compile and was sponsored by the Sigma Xi Scientific Research 
Society and the United Nations Foundation, a private group 
founded by U.S. cable television mogul Ted Turner. 
It comes in the wake of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change's (IPCC) latest assessment of the science of 
climate change, which concluded that human activity, namely 
the burning of fossil fuels, is almost certainly changing the 
climate. If unabated, greenhouse gas emissions could push 
average global temperatures more than 6 degrees Celsius higher 
by century's end, the IPCC said, rising sea levels, increasing 
heat waves, droughts and severe weather events. 
"It is still possible to avoid an unmanageable degree of 
climate change, but the time for action is now," said report 
coauthor John Holdren, director of the Woods Hole Research 
Center and chairman of the board of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science. 
The study urges the international community to implement a new 
global policy framework to cut emissions, with a mechanism 
that establishes a price for carbon - either a tax or a 
cap-and-trade program. 
Policies to encourage energy efficiency and carbon-free energy 
are needed, according to the report, which called on the world 
to increase public and private energy technology research 
three- or four-fold to more than $45 billion a year. 
Research on carbon sequestration and clean coal technology is 
critical, the panel said, and the world should cease deploying 
coal-fired power plants absent those capable of 
"cost-effective and environmentally sound retrofits for 
capture and sequestration of their carbon emissions." 
The study recommends the United Nations and governments 
worldwide accelerate implementation of "win-win solutions" 
that can moderate climate change while also moving the world 
toward a more sustainable future energy path and making 
progress on the UN's Millennium Development Goals to alleviate 
global poverty and increase environmental sustainability. 
The report recommends the United Nations push governments to 
act to mitigate and adapt to climate change. 
Such measures include improving transportation through 
increased efficiency standards and incentives for 
alternative-fuel cars, as well as greener commercial and 
residential buildings and an expansion of the use of biofuels. 

The UN and other international institutions must also help the 
world's poorer nations and most vulnerable communities prepare 
for climate change, the report said. In addition, the global 
community should discourage development on coastal land that 
is less than one meter above present high tide, as well as 
within high-risk areas such as floodplains, and ensure that 
the effects of climate change are considered in the design of 
protected areas and efforts to maintain biodiversity. 
"The world is experiencing climate disruption now and future 
increases in droughts, floods and sea-level rise will cause 
enormous human suffering and economic losses," said coauthor 
Rosina Bierbaum, former acting director of the White House 
Office of Science and Technology Policy. "We can manage water 
better, bolster disaster preparedness, increase surveillance 
for emerging diseases . . . and enhance local capacity to cope 
with a suite of expected changes."

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