Global warming may cost up to $20 trillion over 2 decades: UN chief

The Jakarta Post

UNITED NATIONS (AP): Global warming could cost the world up to US$20 trillion over two decades for cleaner energy sources and do the most harm to people who can least afford to adapt, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns in a new report.

Ban's report obtained by The Associated Press provides an overview of UN climate efforts to help the 192-nation General Assembly prepare for a key two-day climate debate in mid-February. That debate is intended to shape overall UN policy on climate change, including how nations can adapt to a warmer world and ways of supporting the UN-led negotiations toward a new climate treaty by 2009.

The treaty, replacing the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, could shape the course of climate change for decades to come. The Kyoto pact requires 37 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gases by a relatively modest 5 percent on average.

Much of the focus has been on the United States, the only major industrial nation to reject the treaty, and on fast-developing nations such as China and India. Many are looking to next year, when a new U.S. president takes the White House. The leading contenders in both political parties favor doing morethan the voluntary approaches and call for new technologies.

In his 52-page report, Ban says that global investments of $15 trillion to $20 trillion over the next 20 to 25 years may be required "to place the world on a markedly different and sustainable energy trajectory."

Today, the global energy industry spends about $300 billion a year in new plants, transmission networks and other new investment, according to UN figures.