Protest precedes NY climate summit

Protestors alarmed by rising levels of climate-warming gases gathered in Australia's main cities on Sunday ahead of a key rally in New York. It's the venue of a one-day UN summit to be attended by 120 world leaders on Tuesday.

Outside a G20 finance ministers' conference in Cairns, near Australia's Great Barrier Reef, dozens of demonstrators held up placards with the words "change now" and "renewables," demanding major switches to sustainable forms of energy generation and capture.

This follows recent warnings by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, had increased more in 2012 and 2013 than in any year since 1984.

In May, two US studies warned that the West Antarctic ice sheet was melting faster than expected and was starting to collapse.

Cairns protestor Geoff Holland accused G20 countries of failing to take responsibility: "They are still representing the interests of extremely powerful fossil fuel corportations," Holland said.

Protests planned worldwide

Protest organizers expect more than 2,600 events on Sunday in more than 150 countries, culminating with a rally in New York billed as the largest march ever on global warming.

Guests scheduled include film star Leonardo DiCaprio, climatologists and former US Vice President Al Gore who has lobbied on the issue in recent years.

Leaders of various religions also plan an Interfaith Summit on Climate Change in New York on Sunday and Monday.

In Berlin, activists plan to converge on the Brandenburg Gate along three routes under the motto "quick, save the world."

Already on Saturday, environmentalists demonstrated in the Indian capital New Delhi wearing penguin costumes. In Kathmandu, Nepal, young protestors displayed the slogan "we have only one world."

UN's Ban calls for bold ideas

Ahead of Tuesday's summit, host and UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged world leaders to come up with bold ideas ahead of the UN negotiating process' next main Paris summit in late 2015. Its aim is to clinch a new global climate treaty.

Momentum was lost at a Copenhagen summit in 2009 when world leaders left without a binding treaty. China and India were exempted from setting goals.

Last year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that by 2100, sea levels will rise 26-82 centimetres (10-32 inches), driven partly by ice melt and partly by expansion of the ocean as it warms.

'Nowhere close,' warns experts

Briefing reporters ahead of Tuesday's summit, UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Orr said the world was "nowhere close" in averting a rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

University of California Irvine scientist Steve Davis said the world was like a "car heading toward the cliff."

"While we're talking about how important it is that we put on the brakes, the car is meanwhile accelerating," Davis said.

Call for ambitious commitments

EU climate negotiator Connie Hedegaard said she hoped the New York gathering, which is not part of the UN's official negotiating conference series, would however prompt leaders to make ambitious commitments before next year's major Paris summit.

John Podesta, the White House's climate adviser, said President Barack Obama's administration was taking Tuesday's talks "seriously."

The US cut its emission by 10 percent from 2005 to 2012, partly due to economic recession, and aims to reach 17 percent by 2020.

The deputy director of China's National Center for Climate Change Strategy, Jou Ji, described Tuesday's scheduled gathering as a "political event." China ranks as the number one carbon polluter. The US is second.

Ipj/lw (AP, dpa, AFP, IPS)