The United States Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that the costs of inaction over climate change are catastrophic.
The British Foreign Secretary William Hague echoed Mr Kerry’s warning as both men urged the need for stronger efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
AAP Newsagency reports Mr Kerry warned that failing to act immediately and decisively on climate change will have “catastrophic” and wide-ranging consequences.
The top US diplomat was reacting to the United Nations expert panel report that said soaring carbon emissions will amplify the risk of conflict, hunger, floods and migration this century.
“Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy,” Mr Kerry, in Paris for crunch talks with Russia over Ukraine, said in a statement.
“Denial of the science is malpractice.”
“There are those who say we can’t afford to act. But waiting is truly unaffordable. The costs of inaction are catastrophic,” he added.
Both Mr Kerry and the British Foreign Minister released statements to that effect hours after a new study by over 300 scientists warned of increasing climate impacts across the world.
Mr Hague said warming of four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels would be “catastrophic”.
He called for “unprecedented global cooperation” to curb carbon pollution levels.
“No country would be left unaffected. Governments everywhere have to act.”
The United Nations report said that, left unchecked, greenhouse gas emissions may cost trillions of dollars in damage to property and ecosystems, and in bills for shoring up climate defences.
The United States and China are among the world’s biggest polluters but Mr Kerry said that “no single country causes climate change, and no one country can stop it”.
AAP reports Mr Kerry cautioned that water scarcity and flooding were security risks.
“The clock is ticking. The more we delay, the greater the threat. Let’s make our political system wake up and let’s make the world respond.”
The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said climate change is happening already and that the signs are everywhere, from melting glaciers and sea ice to more frequent wild fires, extreme heat waves and damaged crops.
It warned of ever more dangerous impacts without rapid action to curb carbon emissions, including extreme weather, sea level rise and species extinctions.
Nearly 200 countries are currently in negotiations over a global emissions reduction treaty, scheduled to be signed off in Paris next year, and come into effect by 2020.
Those discussions are moving slowly, but world leaders are primed to gather in New York at the end of summer for a summit convened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to try and accelerate the process.
An IPCC study released last September said the planet was currently on course to warm by at least 2.0°C by the end of the century, and potentially more if emissions continued to rise as fast as they have done over the previous two decades.
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, who is overseeing international talks, said governments should use this study to “seize the moment and the opportunities for managing climate change risks”.
“The path of tomorrow is undoubtedly determined by our choices today. We must decide which path to follow,” she said.
The latest IPCC study does highlight the potential for parts of society to adapt to changing weather patterns.
However, it offers a bleak forecast for around 15 per cent of small island states, which could disappear under rising sea levels by the end of the century.
Ambassador Marlene Moses, who represents the Alliance of Small Island States, said she hoped the study would convince previously sceptical or apathetic politicians of the need to act.
“We hope that it helps convince the international community, particularly those most responsible for climate change, to address the crisis with greater urgency and not at some abstract date in the future but immediately,” she said.
Environmental news website RTCC reports that some national governments still appear unconvinced, notably those in Canada and Australia, which are currently hostile to any form of tough climate action.
RTCC reports that Australia’s conservative Liberal-National Prime Minister Tony Abbott dismissed the IPCC study, which paints a bleak picture for the Great Barrier Reef and Murray-Darling Basin, and warns of ever-increasing temperatures across the continent.
“Australia is a land of droughts and flooding rains, always has been, always will be,” he told RTCC, but said his administration was “committed” to curbing carbon emissions.
Analysts say countries fiercely opposed to a UN deal are increasingly in a minority, although it is still unclear what form next year’s agreement will take, or if it will be enough to avoid warming of beyond 2.0°C, a level deemed as dangerous in 2009.
“We are seeing signs of renewed momentum to address climate change and this should mount in the coming months,” said Andrew Steer from the Washington DC–based World Resources Institute.
“The UN summit and the COP in Lima should raise ambition leading up to a new universal climate agreement in Paris in 2015,” he added.
For leading climate economist Lord Stern, the signs and costs of climate change after 1C of warming on pre-industrial levels should be enough for governments to take note.
He said: “While people in all countries will need to make themselves more resilient to those impacts that cannot now be avoided over the next few decades, the potential risks from unmitigated climate change towards the end of this century and into the next will be very severe, particularly if global warming exceeds two degrees Celsius.”