A new United Nations report predicts large-scale and irreversible ecological catastrophe unless the international community cuts carbon emissions by half over the next generation. This is perhaps the strongest warnings to date about the consequences of failure to take urgent collective action. The report, to be presented in Brasilia on Tuesday, sets targets and a road map to reduce carbon emissions before the U.N. climate summit in Bali, Indonesia next month.
The report concludes that the rise in global temperature must be limited to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). A temperature rise of between 5.4 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (3 and 4 degrees Celsius) would displace 340 million people through flooding, droughts would diminish farm output, and retreating glaciers would cut off drinking water from as many as 1.8 billion people.
Climate change will hit the poor especially hard. Climate disasters between 2000 and 2004 affected 262 million people, 98 percent of them in the developing world.
Countries have the technical ability and financial resources but lack the political will to act, the report says. It singles out the United States and Australia as the only major Western economies not to sign the Kyoto Protocol. For more on the UN Report and the Proposed Road Map, consult these sources:
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