On the 16th January 2014 the end of the world as we know it may have been announced.

On that day the Guardian reported that a BP study had predicted a rise in greenhouse emissions of almost a third in twenty years time. This huge increase in carbon di-oxide (CO2) emissions will come despite existing efforts to cut them back.

The Guardian report concluded that an additional amount of CO2 in the atmosphere of this order would "[put} hopes of curtailing dangerous climate change beyond reach", citing the views of the world's top climate scientists that emissions would have to start falling by 2020 to give us a chance of avoiding a further two degrees Centigrade of warming beyond which the effects of climate change could become catastrophic and irreversible.

It should be noted that the weird weather of recent years, torrential rain and exceptionally violent storms in Northern Europe, super typhoons in Asia, massive ice storms in the US, record heatwaves in Australia, is happening with a rise in global temperatures of less than one degree Centigrade.

This study by a global oil and gas giant (not the work of a partisan environmental group incidentally) was also reported in the business columns of the Times but nowhere else in the mainstream media. It has now been submerged in the tide of other stories washing over the news desks of the world.

This petition is an attempt to rescue this vital report from media obscurity and to alert the world's leaders to its significance. The message is clear. The world can only be saved by sweeping, emergency action to curb CO2 emissions not by the long term, half-hearted measures currently being taken.  There must be a much quicker switch to meeting our power needs from non-carbon sources of energy and using energy much more efficiently.

We are sleepwalking towards a climate disaster the worst effects of which will be felt by our children and grandchildren. 

By signing this petition you will have played your part in what might be the most important wake-up call ever.

BREAKING NEWS

LATEST CLIMATE CHANGE REPORT CONFIRMS NEED FOR URGENT ACTION TO AVERT DISASTER and for more signatures for this petition.

 

The head of the United Nations climate panel,Rajendra Pachauri, said he hoped its report on the rising threat of climate change would “jolt people into action”.

 

The report, released on 31 March 2014, is a 2,600-page catalogue of the risks to life and livelihood from climate change – now and in the future.

Rajendra Pachauri, who has headed the IPCC for 12 years, said he hoped it would push government leaders to deal with climate change before it is too late.

“I hope these facts will - for want of a better word - jolt people into action,” he said.

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, took a similar line.

“Read this report and you can't deny the reality: Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy,” Kerry said in a statement. "Let's make our political system wake up and let's make the world respond."

The report was built on the work of more than 300 scientists drawing from 12,000 scholarly articles to produce the most comprehensive picture of climate risks to date. Pachauri said the report provided all that governments could need for coming up with a strategy for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and protecting populations from climate change.