Food price 'a wake-up call'
2008-05-30 07:29
Oslo - Governments will have to cut
greenhouse gases far more deeply than planned to control global
warming and high food prices linked to droughts are a wake-up
call, four leading scientists said on Thursday.
"We have lost 10 years talking about climate change but not
acting on it," the experts, led by Britain's Martin Parry who is a co-chair of a UN Climate Panel group on the impacts of climate change, wrote in the journal Nature.
They said there was "false optimism" about easy fixes.
By 2050, global emissions would have to be cut by 80%
of the 1990 levels - well beyond the 50% target under
consideration for a July summit in Japan by the Group of Eight
industrial nations.
"We are now probably witnessing the first genuinely global effects of greenhouse gas warming," they wrote of high food prices partly caused by droughts, for instance in the major grains producer Australia, and by a drive to produce biofuels on farm land.
"This should serve as a wake-up call," they said. More than 190 nations have agreed to work out a new long-term treaty by the end of 2009 to combat climate change to succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol.