"A new international body could help in the fight against global warming but the need for action is too urgent to wait for one to be created, two leading economists and climate change experts said on Friday.
Nicholas Stern [former World Bank chief economist and current head of the UK Government Economic Service] and American Jeffrey Sachs both advocate urgent global action to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that many scientists believe trap heat in the atmosphere with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Earlier this month, French President Jacques Chirac called for the creation of a UN environment body that would have more clout than the existing UN Environment Program, known as UNEP, a plan backed by 45 other nations but not the US, China or Russia. ‘
We probably will need some kind of organization,’ said Stern... ‘But we can'tSachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and a UN anti-poverty adviser, said he favored creating a World Environment Organization, but
wait for such an organization. We have to get on with it now,’ said Stern.
‘I don't believe it's necessary for solving this problem.’Instead, the UN and existing agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions could do the job if world leaders took them seriously enough, Sachs said.
