The UN's expert panel on climate change today highlighted the disconnect between international goals to fight global warming and what is being done to attain them.
Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases must drop by 40-70 per cent by 2050 to keep the global temperature rise below the 2-degree C (3.6-degree F) cap set in UN climate talks, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said.
The opposite is happening now. On average global emissions rose by 1 gigaton a year between 2000 and 2010, outpacing growth in previous decades to reach "unprecedented levels" despite some efforts to contain them, the IPCC said.
"There is a clear message from science: To avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual," said Ottmar Edenhofer, one of three co-chairs of the IPCC working group looking at ways to fight climate change.
The panel didn't get into who should do what in the 33-page summary meant to serve as a scientific guide to governments negotiating a new climate agreement, which is supposed to be adopted next year.
Leaked drafts of that document showed the biggest reason for the rising emissions is the higher energy needs resulting from population growth and expanding economies in the developing world, mainly in China and other large countries.
However, diagrams that illustrated that were deleted by governments in the final version that was adopted at a weeklong IPCC session in Berlin.
"The problem for the governments was that they felt that these different perspectives can cause harm for them because they can be made at different scales responsible for the emissions," Edenhofer told The Associated Press.
The graphics divided the world into four categories, low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high income countries. Participants in the closed-door session said many developing countries objected to using such income categories.
