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monday 5 march
2001
we can tackle climate change, says
un
The huge cuts in pollution needed to
combat dangerous global climate change are
technologically and economically possible
within relatively short time scales, a United
Nations report has said today.[1]
Reacting to the report, Roger Higman,
Climate Campaigner at Friends of the Earth
International said:
"This report is a ray of hope, revealing
that it is possible to prevent the terrible
climatic consequences from burning coal, oil
and gas. Hundreds of workable and
cost-effective alternative solutions exist.
Now it is time for governments around the
world to put them into practice. It is
absolutely imperative that the negotiations
on a world climate treaty, which are due to
resume this summer in Germany, reach a
successful outcome. The United States and the
handful of other countries that have so far
failed to take effective action must accept
genuine cuts in their own emissions."
Key findings in the report include:
-
stopping climate change will bring
other social, environmental and economic
benefits. As a result, some solutions have
net social benefit (point 12)
-
policies to cut emissions have little
effect on overall economic growth (point
13)
-
policies to enhance ‘carbon sinks', eg:
by tree planting, cannot solve the problem.
Only real cuts in emissions can (point
8).
-
the certainty of achieving emissions
cuts and the fairness of policies needs to
be considered as well as narrow economic
costs and benefits (point 23).
Notes to editors:
[1] The United Nation's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment
Report: Working Group 3 meeting in Accra,
Ghana; Mitigation: Summary for Policy Makers,
released 09.00hrs GMT 5 March 2001. Available
from www.ipcc.ch
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