London: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned on Monday the planet faced "catastrophe" if action to tackle climate change is not agreed at a key UN conference on global warming in December.
Brown told a meeting of 17 major developed and developing countries in London that the costs of failing to address global warming would be greater than the impact of two world wars.
He told the Major Economies Forum (MEF) that a deal at December`s conference in Copenhagen was possible, amid recent warnings from the US that the meeting could fail in its goal to draw up a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
But with fewer than 50 days to go before the UN talks, Brown warned that countries were failing to make progress quickly enough to reach agreement.
"We can`t afford to fail. If we fail, we pay a heavy price," he warned.
"For the planet, there is no plan B."
Brown called on world leaders to work together directly to achieve a deal which sets out binding targets for rich countries to cut their emissions, and finance to help the poorest countries cope with the impact of climate change.
The prime minister said: "If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice.
"By then it will be irretrievably too late.
"So we should never allow ourselves to lose sight of the catastrophe we face if present warming trends continue."
Brown said he shared the concerns of low-lying island states such as the Maldives, whose government held an underwater cabinet meeting Saturday to focus global attention on rising sea levels that threaten to submerge them.
And he warned that the people least responsible for climate change -- the inhabitants of the world`s poorest countries -- were being hit hardest and first.
The MEF, which was set up by US President Barack Obama in March, includes Britain, China, Germany, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The two-day meeting ends later Monday, with a press conference at 1700 GMT.
Bureau Report
