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Global warming can be tackled, says UN

Humans need to make sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 50 years to keep global warming in check, but it need cost only a tiny fraction of world output, a major U.N. climate change report said on Friday.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in the third of a series of reports, said keeping the rise in temperatures to within 2 degrees Centigrade would cost only 0.12% of annual gross domestic product.
"It’s a low premium to pay to reduce the risk of major climate damage," Bill Hare, a co-author of the report, told Reuters. "It’s a great report and it’s very strong and it shows that it’s economically and technically feasible to make deep emission reductions sufficient to limit warming to 2 degrees," he said. "It shows that the costs of doing this are quite modest."

To keep within the 2 degree threshold which scientists say is needed to stave off disastrous changes to the world’s climate, emissions of carbon dioxide need to drop between 50 and 85% by 2050, the report said.

However, technological advances — particularly in producing and using energy more efficiently — meant that such targets were within reach, the report said.