Gore calls for urgent action to tackle global warming

BERLIN: Climate crusader Al Gore appealed to world leaders to hold an emergency session at the United Nations early 2008 to tackle global warming.
 
The meeting should review decisions taken at the December conference in Bali on a climate framework to replace the Kyoto accords, the former US vice president said here on Tuesday.
 
The Nobel Peace laureate suggested the leaders meet every three months until a new treaty is ready to come into force by 2010 -- two years before the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gas emissions run out.
 
This would be the best way to get the world's two biggest polluters -- the US and China -- to join, he said. Neither is effectively bound by Kyoto, but are more likely to join a new treaty -- one that will be negotiated in Bali.
 
"It's not politics or ideology," he told a climate conference sponsored by German energy provider EnBW. "It's a moral issue."
 
This was Gore's first trip to Europe since being awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month together with the UN's climate body IPCC, for increasing awareness of man-made global warning.
 
In an impassioned speech, Gore painted a gloomy picture of a planet where 70 million tonnes of global warming pollutants are being pumped into the atmosphere every day.
 
"The North Polar ice cap is now beginning to melt more rapidly," he said. New data showed "the melting is now so rapid the scientists tell us the North Polar icecap could be completely gone in the next 24 years.
 
"We must open our eyes and open our hearts and open our minds," he said, calling for "a shared public vision that what we have to do matters".
 
The world, he said, should stop focusing on short-term considerations and learn "that we should no longer treat the atmosphere of our planet as if it is an open sewer".
 
Earlier, Gore described global warming as ‘the most dangerous crisis’ humankind has ever faced, but said it also presented an opportunity.
 
"I am convinced the world will see a great change in the way in which we combat this crisis," he said ahead of a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
 
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the conference that action was needed to ensure that global warming did not trigger new conflicts.
 
"We must take steps to avert a Cold War on the North Pole," the minister said in reference to the scramble by Russia and other states to claim the region's vast energy reserves.
 
Such claims had to be decided under the aspects of international law, the minister said. "We have to realise that here we can only win together or lose together," he added.
 
Russia made claims to the Arctic early August when a research submarine planted a Russian flag on the floor of the Arctic Ocean. The move triggered counter-claims by Canada, Denmark and other states bordering the resource-rich territory.
 
The conference took place amid a new report that the Earth's atmosphere is accumulating carbon dioxide much faster than expected, and the planet's oceans and trees are also not absorbing as much carbon dioxide as they used to.
 
The report to the National Academy of Sciences said the growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide is ‘increasing rapidly’.
 
Gore, who served as US vice president under Bill Clinton, has arguably become the most prominent activist against global warming.
 
His smash hit climate documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ won an Oscar this year and led to calls for him to run again for president in 2008 after losing the disputed 2000 election to George W. Bush.