"U.N.'s Ban Urges Climate Action Ahead of New York Summit"

"ABU DHABI — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday he was hopeful that a goal of limiting global temperature rises to a maximum 2° Celsius could be achieved, but urged governments to take practical action before it was too late.

"We have to ask the leaders to commit to bold ambitious targets and we will ask them to accelerate their actions on the ground," Ban told a two-day conference on climate change in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi.

Ban said both meetings would be "solution shops" for an urgent problem.

Many developing nations want a one-day summit in New York on September 23 to be the deadline for rich countries to outline planned cuts in greenhouse gases beyond 2020, seen as a key step towards securing a global climate deal in 2015.

Governments have promised to limit temperature rises to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times to avert ever more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels that the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says are linked to man-made warming."

Maha El Dahan and Regan Doherty report for Reuters May 5, 2014.

SEE ALSO:

"U.N. Chief Urges Action on Climate" (AP)