World's newspapers unite to urge climate change action

AFP
7/12/2009

LONDON — Newspapers in 45 countries will implore Monday world leaders to take decisive action at the Copenhagen climate change talks, warning failure will bring calamity, the London-based Guardian said.

A banner is displayed by environmental protestors in front of Nelson's Column

Fifty six newspapers, including Le Monde in France, the Miami Herald in the US and the Gulf Times in Qatar, will publish the same editorial warning climate change will "ravage our planet" unless action is agreed, it said Sunday.

"We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest failure of modern politics," it said.

Many of the newspapers will take the unusual step of publishing the editorial on the front page of their Monday editions, the Guardian said, featuring the piece on its website.

The editorial, to be published in 20 languages including Chinese, Russian and Arabic, has been thrashed out by newspaper editors for more than a month ahead of the UN crunch talks starting Monday, the paper said.

The facts behind climate change are clear, despite a recent row over leaked emails from a key climate research unit in Britain, the editorial said.

The leaks sparked claims scientists were trying to suppress data which did not support the view that temperatures are rising.

"In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have left to limit the damage."

"Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted."

Leaders must agree to take action to limit temperature rises to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), warning that commitments so far would see temperatures hit an unacceptable level of 3.5 C (6.3 F), it said.

"Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage out planet, and with it our prosperity and security."

The newspapers range from Italy's La Repubblica and Politiken in Denmark to The Cambodia Daily, the Irish Times and the Toronto Star.

The crunch conference gathers 192 nations under the flag of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The goal is to deliver an accord that will ratchet up efforts against climate change, driven by uncontrolled emissions of heat-trapping carbon gases from fossil fuels.