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The world will pay dearly for delaying action on climate change

Delay climate action – and pay: report, SMH, January 3, 2013 An
agreement by almost 200 nations to curb rising greenhouse gas
emissions from 2020 will be far more costly than taking action now to
tackle climate change, according to research published on Wednesday.

Quick measures to cut emissions would give a far better chance of
keeping global warming within an agreed U.N. limit of 2 degrees
Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times to avert more floods,
heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.

“If you delay action by 10, 20 years you significantly reduce the
chances of meeting the 2 degree target,” said Keywan Riahi, one of the
authors of the report at the International Institute for Applied
Systems Analysis in Austria.

“It was generally known that costs increase when you delay action. It
was not clear how quickly they change,” he told Reuters of the
findings in the science journal Nature based on 500 computer-generated
scenarios.

It said the timing of cuts in greenhouse gases was more important than
other uncertainties – about things like how the climate system works,
future energy demand, carbon prices or new energy technologies. The
study indicated that an immediate global price of $US20 a tonne on
emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, would give
a roughly 60 percent chance of limiting warming to below 2C.

Wait until 2020 and the carbon price would have to be around $US100 a
tonne to retain that 60 percent chance, Riahi told Reuters of the
study made with other experts in Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia
and Germany.

And a delay of action until 2030 might put the 2C limit – which some
of the more pessimistic scientists say is already unattainable –
completely out of reach, whatever the carbon price.

“The window for effective action on climate change is closing
quickly,” wrote Steve Hatfield-Dodds of the Commonwealth Scientific
and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia in a separate
commentary in Nature.

Governments agreed to the 2C limit in 2010, viewing it as a threshold
to avert dangerous climate change. Temperatures have already risen by
0.8 degree C (1.4F) since wide use of fossil fuels began 200 years
ago.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/delay-climate-action–and-pay-report-20130103-2c641.html#ixzz2H2weXFiE

January 4, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change