A global deal in Copenhagen can still pull us back from the brink

Source: WBCSD

An international scientific conference on global warming in Copenhagen, attended by some 2,000 leading scientists, stated: "The climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. Rapid, sustained and effective mitigation based on global and regional actions is required to avoid dangerous climate change."

The urgency of the warning and the demand for political action are inspired by the most recent data on the progress of global warming which suggest our climate is heating up faster than many scientists expected only two years ago. Research papers were presented to the conference which showed a range of potentially catastrophic consequences if we adopt a "business as usual" approach. The melting of Arctic sea ice could cause global sea levels to rise by more than a metre by the end of the century. The disappearance of the Amazon rainforest is a possibility if the world warms by 3C over the next 100 years. Under such conditions, billions of people, particularly in the poorer parts of the world, would be forced to move across existing national borders in order to survive.

Lord Stern, the author of a seminal report for our Treasury on global warming, summed up the likely effect on human societies: "Extended conflict, social disruption, war essentially, over much of the world, for many decades." Those are the stakes. And they could not be higher.

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