Kampala — SCEPTISM engulfs the climate change threat. In the recently concluded global editor's forum on confronting global warming and achieving energy security in Copenhagen, Denmark, most of the participants were not sure it is a real threat.

However, a sense of panic appears to be setting in among many campaigners for drastic cuts in global carbon emissions. The blame game is at play. Developing countries blame rich countries for the lack of progress.

In relation to that, world leaders at the three-day Copenhagen event that attracted 300 editors from 119 countries noted that climate change has moved from the back of the newspapers through the science, domestic and foreign affairs sections, onto the front pages. They urged the media to hammer home the message that climate change is a global challenge. The world has seen from the global economic crisis that no country has escaped from its shock waves. That we have learnt that we sink or swim together.

President Obama is one of those who have voiced the threat. He is quoted to have said, "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear" and that "delay is no longer an option".

Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, warned that tackling climate change later will cost much more than doing it now.

He said the way ahead is hard, but we cannot be distracted by talk of Plan B or we will end up with Plan F - for failure. There is no Plan B as we have no Planet B, he said.

Seventeen years ago, in 1997, industrialised nations promised in Rio de Janeiro to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. Emissions overshot the target by 12%. In Kyoto, in 2007, world leaders committed to a cut of 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2010 but nothing so far is seen.

Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, said the greatest danger of climate change will be on those in the poorest countries or small islands nations, with the least resources to protect their people. He called for climate justice.

He stressed that climate justice demands that the industrialised countries meet their historic responsibility for the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere saying that any future agreement will only be successful if it is perceived by all participating countries to be equitable.

Annan said while all countries need to take steps to reduce emissions, the developed economies must take the lead by making the most dramatic cuts. That they must lead in ensuring that global emissions peak by 2020 and fall by at least 50% from 1990 levels by 2050, he stressed.

To achieve this, he said, industrialised nations need to commit themselves to reduce emissions by between 25 and 40% by 2020.

He said that fast-emerging economies like Brazil, China, India and South Africa also need to engage meaningfully but in a way that does not prevent them improving standards of living through economic growth. He said this requires them to commit to reducing their energy intensity significantly by 2020, and agreeing to emissions reduction targets afterwards.

He emphasised that these steps by both industrialised and fast-emerging economies must be backed by national policies and targets that can be monitored and verified.

He cautioned that tackling climate change should not come at the expense of trapping millions in abject poverty saying that climate justice and Millennium Development Goals are mutually reinforcing.

Annan said that developing countries, particularly the least developed, must be given the capability to catch-up with the rest of the world through economic development. That climate justice will demand a major and additional transfer of resources to help meet the cost of adaptation and mitigation measures in these nations.

That they will require at least $100b a year for adaptation which is far more than that committed so far by the richer countries, but a figure around which there is a growing consensus. He said that these could appear large sums but that wealthy nations have been finding trillions of dollars over the last 18 months to rescue their banks.

He said the United States in particular has a huge responsibility to go to Copenhagen for the COP15 with the ambitious and generous position the world expects from it.

Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister for Climate and Energy, said if the US does not act positively, its businesses will suffer most.

Annan proposed that the Copenhagen December agreement must establish a fund, governed transparently, to support the mitigations and adaptation actions of developing countries.

There must also be widespread transfer of clean energy technologies to developing countries to enable them grow their economies. He also proposed that the barriers that hamper the sharing of such knowledge, such as intellectual property rights and competitive rules, must be overcome.

Denmark's Prime Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, said climate change is a global challenge that calls for global solutions. He said Denmark last month launched the world's largest offshore wind turbine park in the North Sea with 91 wind turbines. These, he said, are meant to produce electricity enough for 200,000 households.

Jose Manuel Barroso, said tackling climate change is an immense economic opportunity. He said that building the low-carbon economy that is needed, will unleash a surge of innovation, investment and jobs in clean technologies and products.

He gave an example of renewable energy where Europe has committed to doubling its share to 20% by 2020 will generate some 90 billion euros of additional investment in renewables and some 700,000 new jobs and reduce Europe's oil and gas import bill by 45 billion euros a year by 2020.

He called on the developing countries to translate their domestic actions on climate change mitigation into overall agreement.

He said though developing countries are right that industrialised countries are responsible for climate change, but correctly assigning responsibility for the past does not address the future.

That if the industrialised world reduced their emissions to zero today, and the developing countries continued with business as usual, we would still reach the dangerous level of 650 ppm (parts per million) by 2050. He said the solution lies in striving to achieve the necessary, collective 25-405 reductions by 2020