The international community has as little as 15 years to limit greenhouse gas emissions and invest in clean energy technologies before climate change will become too serious a problem for current technology to tackle or will be extremely costly, states a United Nations draft report that was recently leaked in an apparent effort to influence policymakers. Japan and other developed and emerging economies must take the report's conclusions seriously and strive to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The draft report by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that although in recent years emissions have been falling in some of the wealthy industrialized nations due in part to a rise in the use of renewable energies and cleaner fuels. For instance, U.S. emissions in 2013 were about 10 percent lower than their 2005 level thanks to an increase in the use of cleaner burning natural gas instead of coal. But this progress has been overwhelmed by rapid growth in the global use of fossil fuels over the past decade, especially in rapidly growing economies such as China. And lower emissions levels in wealthier countries also reflect in part the fact that many of the goods they consume are now manufactured in rising economies.
Stating that carbon-dioxide emissions grew by 2.2 percent a year on average from 2000 to 2010 — nearly double the 1.3 percent rate of growth from 1970 to 2000 — the IPCC identifies the two main forces fueling this phenomenon: a steady rise in the world's population and a sharp increase in economic growth. The burning of coal and oil were responsible for the majority of emissions.