Time running out for Earth

GLOBAL warming could reach "the point of no return" in as little as ten years, and urgent action is needed now before it is too late, an international task force of politicians, business leaders and academics has warned.

In what amounts to a clarion call to international policymakers, a report by the Climate Change Task Force has said carbon dioxide concentrations will become so great within the next ten to 20 years that any attempt to reduce them will be futile.

Published today, Meeting the Climate Change Challenge has been timed to coincide with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s repeated pledges to tackle global warming as chairman of the G8 group of industrialised nations and the EU.

Stephen Byers, who chairs the Climate Change Task Force, said that the United States must be persuaded to act now, and that it could no longer ignore "clear scientific evidence from the best people in the world".

For the first time in such an authoritative report, an official danger point is identified beyond which the planet could be irretrievably heading towards calamitous changes such as crop failures, water shortages, raised sea levels, increased disease and the death of millions of acres of forests.

This is identified as 2C higher than the average world temperature in 1750.

This date was chosen as it is prior to the industrial revolution when large amounts of carbon dioxide - which traps the sun’s heat - started to be emitted into the atmosphere.

Currently the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 379 parts per million, rising steadily at 2ppm each year.

The study estimates that once this reaches 400ppm - in a decade - the earth will reach the "point of no return" where it will be too late to reverse the catastrophic consequences.

Mr Byers said: "There has been a broad consensus that if we continue along the recent path then within my lifetime we will see devastating consequences for our planet due to global warming.

"If we maintain on this trajectory then the planet will change to such a degree that even taking dramatic steps in 20 or 30 years’ time will be too late."

He added: "America is the key here and I have found in my meetings [there] that the political mood is changing."

The report was produced by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Centre for American Progress in the US, and The Australia Institute. The group’s chief scientific adviser is Dr Rakendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Dr Richard Dixon, the head of research at the environmental campaign group WWF, said: "This is the right level of caution and the right level of urgency in the message that they are giving. There is a really crucial point beyond which quite catastrophic events could start to happen, and we most definitely do not want to go there.

"In a sense the tragedy is that we have [George] Bush in the White House for the next four years, because a change there really could have altered the course of international policy."

He concluded: "The Kyoto Protocol has got to succeed, because if industrialised countries can demonstrate that something can be done about emissions then there is a chance that the developing countries, particularly India and China who have vast reserves of dirty, polluting fuels such as coal, will sign up to some sort of limits.

"This has to be backed by subsidies so they are encouraged to invest in the right kind of clean technologies."