Copenhagen climate change conference vital for human future

Failure to agree radical reductions in carbon dioxide emissions at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December would spell a global health catastrophe, warn Professor Sir Michael Marmot (Director of the UCL International Institute for Society and Health) and Lord Michael Jay in an editorial published today in The Lancet and the British Medical Journal . The authors say that the scientific evidence that global temperatures are rising and that man is responsible has been widely accepted since the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There is now equally wide consensus that the world must reduce CO2 emissions to at most 50% of 1990 levels by 2050, if it is to have even a 50% chance of preventing temperatures exceeding preindustrial levels by more than 2ºC, considered by many to be the tipping point for catastrophic and irreversible climate change. The editorial goes on: 'These arguments need to be tackled head on. Climate change is global, and emissions know no frontiers. The necessary measures should be seen not as a cost but as an opportunity. Coal fired power stations and internal combustion engines pollute the atmosphere and worsen health, and deforestation destroys biodiversity, whereas saving energy helps hard pressed household budgets, and drought resistant crops help poor farmers.