Hence, if emissions continue to rise unchecked, we risk releasing billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere as rising temperatures trigger a huge die-back of trees, causing billions of acres of South American rainforest to turn into desert before 2050, the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre predicts. Yet the political and corporate response to this problem has been grossly inadequate. To stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at non-catastrophic levels, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in 1990 that greenhouse gas emissions from human sources would have to be reduced immediately by at least 60 per cent below 1990 levels. At Kyoto, however, developed countries agreed to a cut of just 5.2 per cent, to be achieved between 2008 and 2012. Worse, the US Congress has refused to ratify the US' Kyoto commitment.
Large corporations block meaningful change.
For short-term gain, they seem willing to jeopardise the survival of a large part of humanity' We deplore the lack of serious political action to address this issue and we deplore attempts by many large corporations to block meaningful change. For short-term gain, they seem willing to jeopardise the welfare, indeed survival, of a large part of humanity. This is the very minimum that the current crisis demands. While it may be challenging for many countries, it is the political will to implement policy options which is the biggest challenge, not the technological one. Implement nothing less than a crash programme to meet these targets.