LONDON (AFP) — Prime Minister Gordon Brown said tackling climate change was an urgent challenge, following Saturday's report on global warming by a Nobel-winning climate panel.
Brown spelled out how Britain would approach the United Nations climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, from December 3-14, which is tasked with setting a strategy for deepening cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.
He said he would ask Britain's independent climate change committee to report on whether the domestic target of a 60 percent reduction in emissions by 2050 should be increased.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said evidence of a human role in the warming of the planet was now "unequivocal" and the effects on the climate system could be "abrupt or irreversible."
"The IPCC's measured assessment shows that the world needs to face up to the challenge of climate change, and to do so now," Brown said in a statement.
The "urgent challenge" threatens not only the environment but also "international peace and security, prosperity and development."
In Bali, "it is vital that we launch negotiations on a comprehensive global agreement on tackling climate change," he said.
Any agreement should see global emissions peaking no later than in 10 to 15 years' time and reduced by at least 50 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, said Brown.
He demanded a binding regime and the creation of a "global carbon market to provide an economic incentive for low carbon investment."
He said any deal should be fair towards the world's poor states in recognising that "developed countries have historic responsibility for causing climate change, and have the greatest capacity for reducing emissions.
"Any new agreement must be comprehensive, addressing emissions from land use and deforestation as well as just energy, and addressing the urgent need to help developing countries adapt to the climate change which is now already damaging their development.
"Securing agreement based on these principles in the next two years will be an immense task for the international community. But we believe it is possible," Brown said.
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