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BALI,
Indonesia—The world’s top climate scientists issued
Thursday a dire warning to urgently commit deep cuts in
greenhouse gases, with reductions of at least 50 percent
by 2050.
More
than 200 experts told negotiators at the United Nations
climate-change conference in Bali that emissions needed
to peak and decline within the next 10 to 15 years. If
emissions are not limited, millions face extreme events
such as droughts, flooding and rising sea levels.
In the
“Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists” released
Thursday, they called for a new international deal on
climate change ensuring global warming does not exceed a
2°C rise above pre-industrial levels, adding that the
European Union and a number of other countries have
already formally adopted such commitments.
The
scientists said they aim to put pressure here over
launching negotiations to extend over the next two years
or so on an emissions-cutting agreement to succeed the
Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
“Global
greenhouse-gas emissions need to be reduced deeply in
order to stay below 2°C. We are calling for the
government negotiators in Bali to recognize the urgency
of taking action now,” said Dr.Mathew England of the
University of South Wales Climate Change Research Center
in Australia.
England
said they support the current scientific understanding
laid out in the recent reports from the Nobel
Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), which has unequivocally concluded that
our climate is warming rapidly, and that we are now at
least 90 percent certain that this is mostly due to
human activities.
While
2°Celsius does not sound like much, scientists said
warming above that threshold would be enough to trigger
mass species extinctions and accelerate melting of polar
ice sheets, which could lead to a seven-meter rise in
sea level in coming centuries. The declaration says
humanity has a “window” of as little as 10 years to turn
the situation around.
“Any
delay in reaching an agreement to tackle global warming
would be disastrous or weaken the measures necessary to
combat climate change,” said Dr. Richard Sommerville
from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San
Diego.
The
conference, on its fourth day, is not expected to set
targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, but
delegates from more than 180 countries are hopeful that
a “road map” can be agreed, setting out the dates by
which consensus needs to be reached.
“There
is no time to waste. We urge the negotiators in Bali to
stand up to the challenge and set strong binding targets
for the benefit of the world population,” Dr.
Sommerville said.
Among
the signatories were experts from Britain, the United
States, Russia, India, Japan, South Africa, Brazil,
Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and several European
countries. |
