BBC Online :A long-awaited UN report on how to curb climate change says the world must rapidly move away from carbon-intensive fuels.There must be a “massive shift” to renewable energy, says the 33-page study released in Berlin. It has been finalised after a week of negotiations between scientists and government officials.Natural gas is seen as a key bridge to move energy production away from oil and coal.But there have been battles between participants over who will pay for this energy transition.The report is the work of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was set up to provide a clear scientific view on climate change and its impacts.The Summary for Policymakers on mitigation paints a picture of a world with carbon emissions rising rapidly.”The high speed mitigation train need to leave the station very soon, and all of global society will have to get on board,” the IPCC’s chair Rajendra Pachauri told journalists in Berlin at the launch of the report.Dr Youba Sokono, a co-chair of the working group that drew up the report said science has spoken.It took a long night of negotiations here in Berlin to finish this IPCC report and that meant keeping a lot of lights blazing – a painful irony given that nearly half of Germany’s electricity comes from burning the very fossil fuels that the report wants to see phased out.The authors do acknowledge the challenge of switching away from carbon-intense energy – in other words, there’s no free lunch. They also admit that there’s no silver bullet either, pointing out that renewable sources still need subsidies and capturing carbon dioxide from power stations is unproven on an industrial scale.And environmentalists will not like one suggestion that many governments will welcome as pragmatic: that gas could replace coal as a “bridging technology” to reduce emissions over the next few decades. Despite these obstacles, the spin around the report is determinedly optimistic, asserting that if the surge in global emissions is reversed then we can avoid the worst of global warming – provided that happens in as little as 16 years’ time. But it will take a lot more talking – and lights blazing – to achieve that. He added that policy makers were “the navigators, they have to make decisions, scientists are the map makers”.
