Global warming is destroying species, raising sea levels and threatening millions of poor people, the United Nations' top scientific panel is expected to say in a report today that U.N. officials hope will help mobilize the world to take tougher actions on climate change.
The report argues that only firm action, including putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions, will avoid more catastrophic events. Those actions will take a small part of the world's economic growth and will be substantially less than the costs of doing nothing, the report will say.
The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be key ammunition as world leaders meet in Bali next month to try to draft a global plan to deal with Earth's rising temperatures after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
The most stringent efforts to stabilize greenhouse gases would cost the world's economies 0.12 percent of their average annual growth to 2050, the report estimates.
"There is high agreement and much evidence that mitigation actions can result in near-term co-benefits, for example improved health due to reduced air pollution, that may offset a substantial fraction of mitigation costs," said the report, which summarizes research over five years of more than 2,000 of the world's top climate change scientists.
The near-final draft, approved Friday, said global warming is "unequivocal" and said man's actions are heading toward "abrupt or irreversible climate changes and impacts."
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