World leaders must agree an
energy saving deal to prevent the future "catastrophe" of floods, heatwaves and droughts that would be caused by global warming, Gordon Brown has said.
Speaking at the Major Economies Forum in London, the prime minister told representatives from 17 of the world's biggest polluters that they have 50 days ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Change summit to ensure that talks do not end in deadlock.
He said: "Once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice."
According to Sky News, Mr Brown warned delegates at the forum that the cost of global warming would be worse than the Great Depression and the two world wars.
He added that by 2080, 1.8 billion people constituting one-quarter of the world's population could suffer from the effects of having insufficient supplies of fresh water.
The UN-supported Copenhagen Climate Change summit will begin on December 7th 2009.
