Widen global warming fight beyond CO2: U.N.

The world should widen a fight against global warming by curbing a string of pollutants other than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said on Friday.

Heat-trapping methane, nitrogen compounds, low-level ozone and soot are responsible for almost half of the man-made emissions stoking climate change in the 21st century, it said.

A wider assault on pollutants, twinned with cuts in carbon dioxide, would help toward a new U.N. climate pact due to be agreed in December and have other benefits such as improving human health, raising crop yields and protecting forests.

"The science is showing us that global warming is happening faster and on a greater scale than anticipated," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told Reuters on the sidelines of a World Climate Conference in Geneva.

"There are other avenues by which we can move forward" than cutting carbon dioxide, the main focus of a planned new U.N. climate deal to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

"And there are multiple benefits."

Soot or 'black carbon', for instance, is among air pollutants blamed for killing between 1.6 and 1.8 million people a year, many from respiratory diseases caused by smoke from wood-burning stoves in developing nations.

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Source: Reuters