UN's climate chief sounds alarm on global warming

The head of the United Nations climate change watchdog warned Sunday that recent research shows there is a need for urgent action to halt global warming.
Speaking to journalists on the eve of annual climate talks in Durban, South Africa, Christina Figueres, excutive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), said that the latest international findings are "sounding alarm bells."
More than 20,000 government officials and activists are to start meeting Monday to wrestle with the problem of carbon emissions and the role scientists say they play in warming the planet.
Figueres referred to reports by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The WMO reported that "the atmosphere has reached record levels of greenhouse gasses," while last week's IPCC report found that hot days "are becoming hotter" and winter cold even colder, she noted.
The Durban talks are a crossroads, since the Kyoto Protocol - which currently covers only 25 per cent of global emissions - expires in December 2012.
Russia, Japan and Canada have already signalled they won't sign on for a second commitment period, which leaves only the European Union and a few other developed countries in the treaty.
The issue divides industrialised nations from developing nations like China, which are exempted from legal pledges to reduce greenhouse gasses under the Kyoto Protocol. The United States, which together with China produces about 40 per cent of global emissions, never ratified the agreement.
But developing countries are under increasing pressure in Durban to get on board with legally binding pledges to reduce emissions.
Greenpeace International said it was time for European governments and major emerging economies like India and China to stop using the United States as an excuse for inaction.
"The entire global effort must not fail because of the USA," said Tove Ryding, Greenpeace coordinator for climate policy.
The European Union said Sunday it wants all 194 countries meeting in Durban to agree to work toward a legally binding global deal by 2015 to reduce carbon emissions before it makes commitments of its own to a second period under the Kyoto Protocol.
The EU wants 100 per cent of greenhouse gasses covered, said Tomasz Chruszczow, a representative from Poland, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.