The world has less than a decade to reverse the growth in greenhouse gas emissions if dangerous climate change is to be avoided, according to a report from a thinktank that goes further than the landmark Stern review last week. Lord Stern's report said that unless greenhouse emissions were tackled the world faced an economic downturn on a par with the great depression.

Yesterday's report from the Institute of Public Policy Research suggests Lord Stern's analysis was too conservative and governments need to move further and faster. To minimise the risk of a 2C rise - seen as the threshold for dangerous climate change - the authors say global carbon dioxide emissions would need to peak between 2010 and 2013.

By 2015 to 2020 the world would need to be cutting carbon emissions by 4%-5% annually and by mid century CO2 levels should be 70%-80% below what they were in 1990, say Paul Baer and Michael Mastrandrea, experts in risk analysis. The government's "aspiration" is to cut carbon emissions by 60% by 2050. "It is the timetable for action, above all, that our research shows we urgently need to rethink," wrote Simon Retallack, head of the IPPR's climate change team, in a foreword to the report. "We do not have decades in which to bend the CO2 curve: we have less than 10 years. The gap between what is necessary and what seems feasible clearly looms large. But if we want to avoid significant risks of appalling global harm we will need to re-examine what is feasible."

If the global average temperature rises by more than 2C, the report predicts, more than 2 billion people will be affected by drought and some of the world's most diverse ecosystems, including coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest, will be severely damaged.

But Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser, told the Guardian in an interview ahead of publication of the Stern review that it was looking increasingly unlikely that the world would be able to stay below the 2C threshold. Carbon dioxide levels are 383 parts per million and rising at 2ppm per year. He believed it would be politically realistic to stabilise CO2 at between 450 and 550 ppm, which would translate into a global average temperature rise of 2.2 to 3.5C.

Yesterday Tony Blair received a petition signed by 150,000 people and delivered by six children. The petition, from the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, called for a climate change bill in next week's Queen's speech to cut UK CO2 emissions by at least 3% annually.
(By James Randerson, The Guardian, 09/11/2006)
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