World to Warm By 8c, Says Thinktank

Latest predictions show that climate change is going to be far worse than earlier forecasts and that Labour's drastic aim of a 60% cut in carbon dioxide emissions for the UK may not be enough, says the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR).

The leading leftwing thinktank examines the next steps beyond the Kyoto agreement under which the UK has agreed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5% and the EU by 8%. But runaway global warming is likely unless the US, the world's biggest polluter can be persuaded to take the issue seriously, the report says.

Geoff Jenkins, the head of the climate prediction programme at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change, says that when soil inevitably starts to break down, it releases the carbon stored in the last 150 years - thus increasing the rate of global warming.

Scientists predict temperatures to rise 5C in the northern hemisphere by 2100. The new calculations show it could be 8C. Scientists believe this would be disastrous, and to prevent even higher rises developed countries must cut emissions by 80%.

In the same paper, Sir Tom Blundell, chairman of the royal commission on environmental pollution, argues that every country would be allocated a share of the maximum amount of carbon that could be safely emitted to the atmosphere.

This means that countries such as India would be allowed a small overall rise in emissions but that Europe and North America would have to impose drastic cuts to achieve fair shares for all.

This approach is seen as a way of getting the US and Australia back into international agreements because every country in the world, including India and China, would have limits imposed.

Kyoto delivers only a 1-2% cut in emissions from industrial nations while total global emissions rise 70%. The IPPR call for a new approach comes as Kyoto members begin a review of existing pledges.

Tony Grayling, IPPR associate director, said: "The next international climate change negotiations must agree on a safe level of emissions in the long term and fair shares between nations ... Climate change policy should be based on sound science and social justice, not the horse trading that characterised the negotiations for the Kyoto protocol."