Dispelling any remaining doubts over human involvement in global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body comprising 2,500 climate experts convened by the UN, said that the evidence for climate change caused by fossil fuel combustion was �unequivocal�. The report, which took six years to complete, is the most authoritative ever produced on climate change. It predicts a rise in 3 degrees Celsius globally by 2100, and was agreed upon by all UN members, including the US and China.

Chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, said, �You can see [from the report] what the costs of inaction are. Everything is [included in the report] by consensus, so the implication is that it has the stamp of acceptance by all governments in the world.� Yvo de Boer, secretary-general of the UN climate change secretariat, said work should now begin on a successor to the Kyoto treaty. The European Union�s environment commissioner urged governments to agree to the European Commission�s proposal of reducing emissions by 30 per cent by 2020. French President Chirac proposed a new worldwide environmental organization to spearhead action on emissions. However, the world�s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, the US, has failed to take action on mandatory emission cuts since the report came out.

As the IPCC report became public, the British government announced that An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore�s movie about global warming, would be distributed to all secondary schools in England. The film will be part of a global warming information pack. Environment Minister David Miliband said, “The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over, as demonstrated by the publication of today’s report.” Meanwhile, the British government is drafting a Climate Change Bill to set the self-imposed target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2050.

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