Sir David Attenborough Warns Civilisation Is Near Collapse Unless We Act Now

They aim to establish rules, figure out financing and build ways to verify that nations are meeting their commitments.

COP24 comes on the heels of the G-20 gathering in Argentina, where 19 of the 20 leaders signed a communique reaffirming their commitment to fight global warming, but President Donald Trump insisted on a paragraph outlining his opposition and the United States decision, under his administration, to withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement. He said: "If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon". About 10 people attended the event, where speakers claimed that temperature increases recorded in recent decades are largely due to increased activity from the sun.

Mr. Gebru Jember Endalew, Chair of the LDC Group, said at the Preparatory Meeting ahead of the Conference that: "It has been a long road to Katowice since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, and there are still many hurdles to overcome to achieve a robust and fair set of guidelines to bring the Agreement to life".

The comments came at the beginning of a two-week climate conference in Katowice, Poland, where emissaries from almost 200 nations are meeting to determine how the world can dramatically scale back greenhouse gas emissions to abide by the landmark Paris climate agreement and, by doing so, stave off the worst effects of climate change.

"Also, I'm not a chemist or a climatologist or a meteorologist; it isn't for me to suddenly stand up and say I have decided the climate is changing".

"In short, we need a complete transformation of our global energy economy, as well as how we manage land and forest resources", Mr Guterres said.

"We need more action and more ambition", Guterres said.

Waskow, who has followed climate talks for years, said despite the Trump Administration's refusal to back this global effort the momentum is going in the right direction.

Ministers and some heads of government plan to join the discussion tomorrowy, when host Poland is expected to push for a declaration ensuring a "just transition" for fossil fuel industries that face cuts and closures amid efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And researchers have also found that climate change is contributing to the destruction of some of the world's most vulnerable natural habitats and is compounding natural disasters, like hurricanes, by increasing rainfall.

In a rare intervention, presidents of previous United Nations climate summits issued a joint statement as the talks got underway, calling on states to take "decisive action.to tackle these urgent threats". "They want you, the decision markers, to act now".

The World Bank on Monday said it was doubling funding for poor countries preparing for climate change to $200 billion over five years. But many other countries are already dealing with the droughts, higher seas and catastrophic storms climate change is exacerbating.

While the government has sought to stress Australia's carbon emissions as a share of economic output and per capita were at 28-year lows, new analysis by Climate Analytics shows pollution rates are more than twice the average of G20 nations.

Even solid progress in Katowice on the Paris goals may not be enough to prevent runaway global warming, as a series of major climate reports have outlined.

He was responding to a question on whether he thinks religions have a role to play in the field of climate change.