Bali Island, Indonesia - Reducing greenhouse gas emissions would only be possible with the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars, a UN official said Friday while sceptics attending a UN climate conference charged that would be money ill spent. To achieve the drastic reductions that climate experts said are necessary to prevent the most disastrous consequences of global warming, investment must rise each year and reach about 200 billion dollars annually by 2030, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said at the conference on the Indonesian island of Bali.
"It sounds like a lot, but if you look at global GDP figures, it is not," Boer said.
Such an amount would account for 0.3 to 0.5 per cent of the global gross domestic in 2030, he said.
Boer's position was challenged by a non-profit group that said reducing greenhouse gases over the next two decades is no cost-effective way to deal with climate change.
The International Policy Network, which funds organizations that promote market solutions to international policy questions, also accused scientists, politicians and environmentalists who are sounding alarm bells over global warming of being fearmongers.
It said in a report compiled from the findings of 41 civil society groups that while global warming is real, "the debate has become distorted by alarmists who claim that unless drastic and urgent action is taken, catastrophic climate change will decimate humanity."
It argued against a new treaty that would include binding limits on greenhouse gases, pointing to the example of the emissions-limiting Kyoto Protocol, which is now in force through 2012.
"In reality, it has barely made a dent in those emissions - in spite of costing many billions of dollars," the network said.
The UN conference that began Monday and continues through December 14 on Bali aims to launch global negotiations on a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which mandates emissions cuts for major developed countries but not for undeveloped or developing nations.
The network argued that a better alternative to an emissions-limiting treaty would be to remove subsidies, taxes and regulations that impede technological innovation and economic growth.
Greenpeace spokeswoman Cindy Baxter said most of the groups that helped compile the network's report were funded primarily by industrial groups such as the oil company Exxon.
"It is surprising that these groups still come forward questioning the science put forward by the IPCC, whose findings have been approved by the governments of the entire international community," said John Hay, spokesman for the UN Climate Change Secretariat.
He was speaking of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which released scientific reports throughout the year warning that climate change is a reality and could seriously harm the future development of economies, societies and ecosystems worldwide.
The UN panel of scientists said global warming must be kept below 2 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst effects of global warming, such as rising sea levels, severe weather, floods, drought and desertification. To do so, it said, global emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that cause global warming would have to peak by 2015 and then be halved by 2050.
If no reductions are made to the rising world energy consumption, however, the International Energy Agency estimated that greenhouse gases would rise 50 per cent.
To spur on the Bali talks, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon admitted that forging a global agreement on the future of climate change action is one of the toughest challenges ever dealt with in the multilateral arena but said failure is not an option.
"Difficult as this path may be, we have no choice. The science has spoken loud and clear. The debate is over," Ban told reporters in New York Thursday, two days before he is to attend the Bali talks himself. "We must think not only of ourselves but our children."
Meanwhile, a report released at the Bali conference showed that countries around the world were taking varying levels of commitment to protect the climate.
Sweden and Germany do the most while Saudi Arabia and the United States do the least, according to the German environmental group Germanwatch.
It examined per-capita emission trends, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and the climate policies of 56 countries responsible for 90 per cent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to compile its rankings.
Sweden kept its top spot from last year, followed by Germany, which earned the second ranking before a 14-point plan was unveiled Wednesday to meet its 2020 target of a 36-per-cent cut in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels.
Germany replaced Britain, which fell down to seventh position on the index. Iceland ranked third.
Germanwatch warned that even high-ranking countries could not sit back and relax.
"The results illustrate that even if all countries engaged in the same manner, current efforts would still be insufficient to prevent dangerous climate change," it said.
