[NYTr] Act now on climate change, says UN Expert

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Guardian - Nov 16, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/16/climatechange

Act now on climate change, says UN official

-'Deep trouble' will follow any failure to agree in Bali

- Negotiator sees continued role for all forms of energy

by Terry Macalister in Riyadh

The United Nations' top climate change official warned yesterday that
the world was in "deep trouble" if it failed to reach agreement at next
month's UN ministerial conference in Bali.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN framework convention on
climate change, said governments were well behind business in preparing
for the challenges ahead.

He said there should be "no war on oil," insisting that all forms of
energy - whether fossil fuels, renewables or nuclear - would have to be
used to meet legitimate aspirations of further economic development and
lower carbon emissions.

Speaking on the sidelines of an Opec summit called to discuss oil
issues, including the environment, the UN official said: "If things go
wrong in Bali, we really are in deep trouble in the sense we have this
very clear message from the scientific community now.

"I have talked to the chair of the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change], Rajendra Pauchari, and it would take five or six years
before they come with another report. Bear in mind the climate change
process so far has been very much science driven.

"If you get this wake-up call now from science and you don't act on it
and then it takes another five or six more years before you get the next
wake-up call, that means you are in trouble."

Within the next 5 to 10 years the world was going to replace 40% of its
power-generating capacity and that capital cost is going to be around
for the next 30 to 50 years, he added.

"So if you don't give investors a clear signal of where policy is going
to go, it makes it very difficult for them to make environmentally sound
decisions, which is why the private sector is way ahead of governments
in calling for a signal that is in their words long, loud and legal."

De Boer has told Opec ministers that every nation in the world had to
start bringing down carbon emissions and there could be no "business as
usual".

The UN negotiator felt there had been a huge build-up of political
consensus this year, which started with the EU's unilateral move to set
a target of generating 20% of electricity from renewables by 2020. And
he was heartened by a proposal yesterday from a former Opec official
that the oil cartel could join industrialised countries in helping to
fund research and development into carbon capture and storage.

Despite this, the UN climate change conference starting December 3 would
not be easy, De Boer said.

"There are very strong signals that the countries are willing to advance
negotiations in Bali. The problems tend to start when you get down to
the small print, when you have to turn that very broad consensus into a
very specific negotiating agenda. Everyone will want to see his or her
issues. You have two weeks to discuss a two-year negotiating agenda,
probably the most complicated issue facing the international community."

And once you have any agreement there will still be a long hard road
ahead, he argued. "Bear in mind it took two years to negotiate the Kyoto
Protocol and I believe it took another five years to understand what had
been negotiated at Kyoto."