AUS State Secretary John Kerry (L) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov talk at the UN General Assembly in New York
UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council is set to adopt a resolution today on eradicating Syria’s chemical arsenal after Russia and the US overcame a bitter deadlock to avert US military action against President Bashar Al Assad’s government.
Amid newfound unity of the veto-wielding council members — Russia, China, France, the US and Britain — French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he hoped a date would also be agreed for so-called Geneva 2 peace talks on Syria. The five members will meet Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and international Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi. Diplomats said if a date was set for peace talks in Geneva, it would likely be November. See also page 8
IPCC alert over 30 years to climate calamity
Stockholm: The world’s leading climate scientists have set out in detail for the first time how much more carbon dioxide humans can pour into the atmosphere without triggering dangerous levels of climate change — and concluded that more than half of that global allowance has been used up.
If people continue to emit greenhouse gases at current rates, the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere could mean that within two to three decades the world will face nearly inevitable warming of more than 2C, resulting in rising sea levels, heatwaves, droughts and more extreme weather.
This calculation of the world’ “carbon budget” is one of the most striking findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which yesterday produced a comprehensive assessment of our knowledge of climate change after their four-day meeting.
