16 December

World leaders about to descend on the COP-15 climate change meeting in Copenhagen have to reach a political consensus later this week that sets the stage for a new legally binding agreement next year on reducing greenhouse gasses, former US vice president Al Gore said on Tuesday.

Gore, chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection and author of An Inconvenient Truth, told several hundred people at the UN organized climate change conference that failure is not an option.

“The alternative to success here in Copenhagen is not acceptable,” said Gore, a co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Decisions made here will shape the future,” he said, adding “we have three days to avoid a failure here. . . More is at stake than many seem to realize. . . The future of our civilization is threatened as never before.”
Gore said recent science shows that greenhouse gasses keep going up and at a faster rate than previously.

“This meeting is crucial; it must be a turning point. . .It must lay the foundations for a binding agreement next year.”

Gore added the world needs a massive and speedy shift away from carbon-based fuels like oil and coal to cleaner, greener renewable energy sources.

Earlier on Tuesday, London Mayor Boris Johnson told attendees at the climate change conference that every Londoner would be within 1.6 kilometres of an electric car charge point by 2015.

Johnson told city leaders that London’s proposed network of electric charge points would support the use of zero carbon-emission electric vehicles.
According to a press release, the plan would help London become the electric capital of Europe with 22,500 charge points at workplaces, 500 on streets and 2,000 in public car parks by 2015.

“A golden era of clean, green electric motoring is upon us and London is well ahead of cities around the globe in preparing the right conditions for this,” Johnson said in the press release.

“There is an urgent need to tackle the risk of serious and irreversible climate change, yet this does not need to be about hair shirt abstinence. I want to pursue radical yet practical steps to cut energy waste. Electric vehicles are a clear example of how technology can provide the solution to the biggest challenge of our generation.”