By Martin Banks - 19th October 2011
Experts have urged the EU and the rest of the international community to "act now" to tackle the "health and security threat" of climate change.
They believe climate change poses an "immediate, grave and escalating" threat to the health and security of people around the globe and "must be tackled urgently".
The event, hosted by the British Medical Journal, heard calls for the EU to adopt "urgently" a 30 per cent CO2 greenhouse gas reduction target by 2020.
At present, the EU has committed itself to a more modest 20 per cent cut but says this could be increased depending on the response from major global polluters such as the US and China.
Participants at the event also urged national governments "to strive to adopt climate change mitigation targets and policies that are more ambitious than their international commitments".
A keynote speaker, Hugh Montgomery, of the UCL Institute for Human Health and Performance, said, "It is not enough for politicians to deal with climate change as some abstract academic concept.
"The price of complacency will be paid in human lives and suffering, and all will be affected.
"Tackling climate change can avoid this, while related lifestyle changes independently produce significant health benefits. It is time we saw true leadership from those who would profess to take such a role."
The conference heard how rising temperatures and "weather instability".
This will include more frequent and extreme weather events, loss of habitat and habitation, water and food shortages, spread of diseases, ecosystem collapse and threats to livelihood, potentially triggering mass migration and conflict within and between countries.
Montgomery warned that humanitarian crises "will further burden military resources" and that the human and economic cost "will be enormous".
However, he also said that tackling climate change could "significantly cut rates of premature death and disability for hundreds of millions of people around the world".
"Tough measures on climate change are needed if we are to secure our future wellbeing," he said.
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