GOVERNMENTS must do more to fight global warming, spurred by a new UN scientific report and damage to nature that is already as frightening as science fiction, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
“This report will be formally presented to the (UN Climate Change) Conference in Bali,” Mr Ban told delegates from more than 130 nations in Valencia and praised them for agreeing an authoritative guide to the risks of climate change.
“Already, it has set the stage for a real breakthrough - an agreement to launch negotiations for a comprehensive climate change deal that all nations can embrace,” he said.
Mr Ban singled out the US and China, the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases, which have no binding goals for curbs, as key countries in the process.
He welcomed initiatives by both and urged them to do more.
“I look forward to seeing the US and China playing a more constructive role starting from the Bali conference,” Mr Ban told a news conference.
“Both countries can lead in their own way.”
Mr Ban said he had just been to see ice shelves breaking up in Antarctica and the melting Torres del Paine glaciers in Chile.
He also visited the Amazon rainforest, which he said was being “suffocated” by global warming.
“I come to you humbled after seeing some of the most precious treasures of our planet - treasures that are being threatened by humanity's own hand,” he said.
“These scenes are as frightening as a science fiction movie,” Mr Ban said.
“But they are even more terrifying, because they are real.”
Delegates at UN climate change talks reached agreement on the 26-page document about the risks of warming, blamed mainly on human burning of fossil fuels, after several days of talks.
The document, which summarises the latest scientific knowledge on the causes and effects of climate change, will be put before environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia, next month - a meeting likely to agree a two-year strategy to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol whose first period ends in 2012.
The summary says human activity is causing rising temperatures and that deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, are needed quickly to avert more heat waves, melting glaciers and rising sea levels.
Bali meeting
Scientists and government officials from the 130-state Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have boiled down the findings of three reports of more than 3000 pages issued this year on the risks of warming.
Delegates from the environmental movement appeared relatively happy the synthesis had not watered down the message from the scientific advisers, as they had feared it might.
“The strong message of the IPCC can't be watered down - the science is crystal clear,” said Hans Verolme, Director of environmental group WWF's Global Climate Change Program.
"The hard fact is we have caused climate change, and it's also clear that we hold the solution ... in our hands."
Delegates said the US delegation had been at the centre of some of the fiercest debate this week.
Sources close to the discussions said the US had tried to change or even remove a key section of the report which lists five main reasons for concern about the effects of warming.
“This has been a very tough week and we've had to debate and defend everything we wanted but the draft report that we submitted has remained intact and has even had additions made in terms of emphasis and even facts that have come to light,” IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.
“When you're on strong scientific ground, you don't yield any ground.
"We have to make sure that scientific truth is not supressed.”
The Kyoto treaty obliges 36 industrial nations to cut emissions by at least five per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
A new deal would aim to involve outsiders led by the US and China, which have no Kyoto goals.
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UN finds climate truth 'terrifying'
