Clouds build ahead of climate summit

Politicians, researchers and environment campaigners face increasing urgency in efforts to tackle greenhouse gas emissions in Bali next month, in the face of growing evidence that the problem is developing at unprecedented speed. A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures — the point considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change which will threaten many species and expose millions of people to drought, hunger and flooding — is now “very unlikely” to be avoided, the world’s leading climate scientists have revealed. The latest study from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put the inevitability of drastic global warming in the starkest terms yet, stating that major impacts on parts of the world — in particular Africa, Asian river deltas, low-lying islands and the Polar regions — are unavoidable and the focus must be on adapting life to survive the most devastating changes. The panel meets in Indonesia to try to bolster the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions in December. For more than a decade, the EU has set a rise of two degrees or less in global temperatures above preindustrial levels as the benchmark after which the effects of climate become devastating, with crop failures, water shortages, sea-level rises, species extinctions and increased disease. And political will appears to be flagging. The former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, championed the need for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, but UK government officials were reported last month to believe Britain’s renewable energy targets were unachievable. Two years ago, an authoritative study predicted there could be as little as 10 years before the ‘tipping point’ for global warming was reached, adding a rise of 0.8oC had already been reached with further rises already locked in because of the time lag in the way carbon dioxide is absorbed into the atmosphere. The IPCC said that the effects of this rise are being felt sooner than anticipated with the poorest countries and the poorest people set to suffer the worst of shifts in rainfall patterns, temperature rises and viability of agriculture across much of the developing world. In its latest assessment of the progress of climate change, the body said: “If warming is not kept below two degrees centigrade, which will require the strongest