The head of the world’s leading climate science authority has warned the struggle to curb global warming is becoming increasingly fraught and costly.
“We will have to work much harder to win this battle now than we would have been required to do 10 or 15 years ago,” Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the Financial Times (FT) in an interview.
Speaking in London, Dr Pachauri said he was still optimistic the world would find a way of curbing the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet to potentially dangerous levels.
“The challenge is daunting but I don’t for a moment feel pessimistic,” he said, explaining there were many examples of technical advances and political actions underway to combat the problem.
The IPCC was set up in 1988 to give governments an expert assessment of how the climate is changing, and why.
It will release the latest section of its fifth lengthy report at the end of this month.
FT reports each of its assessments has confirmed what it says is unequivocal warming, caused largely by emissions of carbon dioxide, the main man-made greenhouse gas, produced by burning fossil fuels such as coal and gas.
However, carbon emissions have kept steadily increasing over the lifetime of the IPCC and last year rose to more than 400 parts per million, the highest level in millions of years.
Average global temperatures have already risen 0.85 degrees Celsius over the past century, and governments have agreed this rise should not exceed 2.0°C, though there is evidence that even 1.5°C of warming could be risky.
Sea levels have also risen and Arctic summer sea ice has retreated faster than many scientists were predicting only a few years ago.
Meanwhile, there is evidence that heatwaves are increasing in intensity in some parts of the world, along with heavy rainfalls.
The IPCC’s new report is expected to confirm that the cost of containing climate change will rise the longer governments wait to reduce emissions.
FT reports Dr Pachauri said: “We will be looking at the costs of mitigation in next month’s report but in our last report in 2007, we said if you want to stabilise temperature increases to no more than 2.0°C – 2.4°C at the least cost, then 2015 is the year when C02 emissions will need to peak.”
