UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Friday urged governments to demonstrate the political will to work out a comprehensive solution to problems of greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Ban was reacting to the adoption in Bangkok of the third report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which highlights response options to deal with findings of the two previous reports, according to dpa. "A comprehensive package on the way forward needs to be urgently launched at the IPCC in Bali in December," Ban said in a statement. "I call on all parties to the Convention on Climate Change to work towards this aim with the political will to decisively abate climate change and its impacts on our planet and people." Governments that signed the Kyoto Protocol dealing with greenhouse gas emissions are debating ways to produce a new agreement by 2010 to replace the protocol, which is expiring in 2012, so that there would be no gap in enforcing measures curbing global warming. The UN raised concern that emissions had gone up by 70 per cent since 1970, saying that unless measures are taken to reduce them, the annual greenhouse gas emissions could reach much higher levels in future decades. It called for new, clean technologies and stringent end-use efficiency standards to significantly reduce emissions. -- SPA
