A new global climate deal expected to be agreed in Paris at the end of this year will not be ambitious enough to prevent dangerous temperature rises, energy secretary Ed Davey has warned.
Mr Davey, who admitted it was “quite likely” he would no longer be energy and climate change secretary by the UN climate talks in December, said a legally-binding treaty can be agreed at the negotiations - and would be the best way to curb global warming.

But he said he feared the talks in Paris would not secure commitments to cut emissions that would keep temperatures from rising by more than 2C, a limit which countries have agreed in a bid to prevent “dangerous” climate change.

He told MPs on the parliamentary Energy and Climate Change Committee that the UK government would be seeking a legally-binding agreement from the talks.
Davey added: “I think that would give the greatest boost both to confidence that we can tackle climate change and also to investors and industry and entrepreneurs to develop the technology that will be needed as we tackle this challenge.
“I want a comprehensive legally-binding treaty where it wouldn’t just be the rules of the game, the accounting, monitoring, verification, all that, which are absolutely essential to be legally binding, I would like to see the commitments to be legally binding.”
Davey admitted that would be difficult for countries such as the US, which would have to get legislation through both houses of Congress, and for China, which could see it as a challenge to its sovereignty.
But he said: “I think we need to argue for it because it would be best.”
He added that a legal deal would provide the most cost-effective way to tackle the problem.
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Countries are expected to put forward their proposed commitments in the first part of the year for the measures they are going to take to tackle climate change.

Davey said analysis of all the commitments would show they would cumulatively “fall well short” of the action needed to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2C above pre-industrial levels.
He told the committee: “The objective of Paris is to keep the 2C limit within reach.
“I’m not expecting, I regret, the commitments we will see in the Paris agreement will get us to 2C, unfortunately.
“I want to be as close as possible, because increasingly my view is we will get an agreement in Paris, but my fear is it will not be ambitious enough and raising ambition levels is really what the climate diplomacy and climate politics of 2015 is all about.”

Countries have previously agreed the target to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2C above pre-industrial levels in a bid to prevent the worst impacts of droughts, heatwaves, floods, rising sea levels and threats to food production, health and security.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/07/paris-climate-deal-dangerous-warming-uk-energy-secretary