France Praises New Step Forward Toward UN Climate Agreement

The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) found in its last climate assessment that humans were “the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century”.

2015 is expected to be a record warm year for the planet, with early indications that 2016 will be similarly hot.

Melting ice and increasing sea levels could swallow up many islands and costal areas, leading to grave global consequences.

Large swathes of NY and Shanghai could disappear under the waves and millions driven into poverty, fresh climate reports warned as ministers scrambled Monday for common ground weeks ahead of a crunch environmental summit.

Currently, we have seen about 20 centimetres of global mean sea level rise since pre-industrial times and this is about one third of the level that could be seen by 2100 in a 2 °C world.

However, he said that as the world continues to warm, scientists expect to see more years passing the 1 degree marker until it becomes the norm.

“Sea-level rise is nothing to be afraid of, because it is slow, but it is something to be anxious about, because it is consuming our land, including the cities in which we create our future heritage today”, said Anders Levermann, co-chair of the Research Domain Sustainable Solutions at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

Secretary-general Michel Jarraud said: ‘Every year we report a new record in greenhouse gas concentrations.

“This means we are now really in uncharted territory for the human race”, he warned.

The previous Harper government announced in May that Canada’s national contribution for the Paris conference would be a 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the year 2030.

A new report from the World Bank highlights the acute threat that climate change poses to the poorer segment of society around the globe.

He said negotiators in Paris needed to acknowledge that emissions had to get to net zero to stabilise the climate.

“The question arises whether we are able to deal with the big issue of climate and at the same time to develop Africa”, Hollande said in a news conference.

BusinessNZ’s manager for energy, the environment & infrastructure, John Carnegie, said he did not believe it mattered that the commitments made in Paris to reduce carbon emissions would not be binding, meaning that countries that fell short of their goals would not face hard sanctions. “And we will need to act fast, because as climate impacts increase, so will the difficulty and cost of eradicating poverty”.