Aim for low world warming despite hardship-World Bank scientist

The world must aim to limit the temperature rise due to global warming to just two degrees Celsius (4 F) despite the near impossibility of achieving it, World Bank Chief Scientist Robert Watson said on Monday.

Scientists say that at atmospheric concentrations of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas from burning fossil fuels — temperatures will rise by two degrees Celsius. At 550 ppm it will be three degrees or more.

Current levels are already over 400 ppm and rising at around two ppm per year.
“We should aim at the 450 ppm target. Whether we can get to it is another question,” Watson told a climate change investment conference in London’s financial district. “In practice I don’t think we can stabilise at two degrees.”

“It is going to take a major change in the way we generate and use electricity to even stabilise between two and three degrees,” he added. “The time for action is now.”

“We first need to use all the technologies that we already have to get to a low carbon economy,” Watson said. “Then we need to invest in the new technologies. We have to mitigate as quickly as possible while also having to adapt.”

But governments couldn’t do it on their own and private finance was reluctant in the absence of a long-term global regulatory framework, he added.

AlertNet