AFP, Le Bourget :Time is running out to avert “a climate catastrophe”, UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned Monday as ministers opened a frenetic week of talks in Paris to forge a 195-nation accord to brake global warming.Scientists predict Earth will become increasingly hostile for mankind as it warms, with disastrous storms, floods and droughts, and rising sea levels that will consume islands and eat away at populated coasts.Four laborious years in the making, the envisaged post-2020 Paris accord will revolutionise the world’s energy industry, replacing coal, oil and gas with cleaner sources that do not emit heat-trapping greenhouse gases.”The clock is ticking towards a climate catastrophe,” the UN secretary general told policymakers gathered in Paris.”The world is expecting more from you than half-measures and incremental approaches. It is calling for a transformative agreement. Paris must put the world on track for long-term peace, stability and prosperity.””The decisions you make here will reverberate down the ages.”The talks opened November 30 with a record-breaking gathering of 150 world leaders who issued a chorus of warnings about mankind’s fate if planet warming went unchecked.”The future is one that we have the power to change right here, right now, but only if we rise to this moment,” US President Barack Obama told the summit.Negotiators spent the rest of the week trying to address the many deep and complex divisions among countries with competing national interests — rows that have condemned previous UN efforts to failure.While none of the major arguments was resolved, negotiators did meet a Saturday deadline to produce a draft 48-page blueprint that agrees on the need for urgent action but is littered with problems.Environment and foreign ministers must now take the tough decisions to eliminate hundreds of bracketed words or sentences that denote disagreement.Ban urged policymakers to be ambitious, pressing them to agree to five-year reviews of the deal, starting even before it comes into effect in 2020.The goal would be to strengthen greenhouse gas-cutting commitments to ensure humanity is on track to limit warming of the planet to less than 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-Industrial Revolution levels.”Current ambition must be the floor, not the ceiling for our common efforts,” Ban saidThe head of the UN’s panel of climate experts rammed home the message of urgency.”The climate is already changing and we know it is due to human activity,” said Hoesung Lee, newly-appointed chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”By the end of this year we may already have reached the temperature increase of 1.0 degrees Celsius. Whatever text you agree here in Paris, please be ambitious and start real action immediately.”
