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Coal is the worst climate offender Enlarge Image

Stop climate change

The world's leaders meet at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen to determine the fate of the climate. They could set us on the path to a deep emissions cuts or they could lock the planet into catastrophic, irreversible climate change.

Temperature change 1765-2100: Graph excerpted from the IPCC's Third Assessment Report showing past and predicted changes to global temperature. Enlarge Image

Science

Climate change is a reality. Today, our world is hotter than it has been in two thousand years. By the end of the century, if current trends continue, the global temperature will likely climb higher than at any time in the past two million years. While the end of the 20th century may not necessarily be the warmest time in Earth's history, what is unique is that the warmth is global and cannot be explained by the natural mechanisms that explain previous warm periods. There is a broad scientific consensus that humanity is in large part responsible for this change, and that choices we make today will decide the climate of the future.

Flooded village in southern France, close to a nuclear power station. Earlier in 2003 the same area experienced a long drought. Climate change means more extreme weather like flooding and droughts. Enlarge Image

Impacts

No one knows how much warming is "safe". What we do know is that climate change is already harming people and ecosystems. Its reality can be seen in melting glaciers, disintegrating polar ice, thawing permafrost, dying coral reefs, rising sea levels, changing ecosystems and fatal heat waves. And it is not only scientists that are witnessing these changes. From Inuit in the far north to islanders near the equator - people are already struggling with the impacts of climate change.

Floods in southern France only months after a severe drought and forest fires in the same area. Global warming, caused by ever increasing consumption of fossil fuels like oil, means extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. Enlarge Image

Extreme weather

There is strong evidence that extreme weather events – such as hurricanes, floods, droughts and heat waves – are increasing because of climate change. In fact, the Financial Initiative of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) recently calculated that the economic costs of global warming are doubling every decade. The cumulative number of people affected by disasters rose to two billion in the 1990s, up from 740 million in the 1970s. Virtually all of these millions were concentrated in poorer countries.

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