British Prime Minister Tony Blair today issued a dire warning about "alarming and unsustainable" global warming.
He said changes would happen within the "lifetime of my children certainly, and possibly within my own".
Blair said the problem was that the challenge was complicated politically by two factors.
Blair said that just as science and technology had given the evidence to measure the danger of climate change, so it could help to find safety from it.
Blair warned: "The issue is urgent. If there is one message I would leave with you and with the British people today, it is one of urgency."
Giving the Prince of Wales Business and the Environment Programme 10th anniversary lecture at the Banqueting House in Whitehall, the premier said: "I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of adjustment. I mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power that it alters radically human existence."
The Prime Minister said that over the coming months the Government would take forward a wider sustainable development and environment agenda to tackle the problems.
Mr
"First, its likely effect will not be felt to its full extent until after the time for the political decisions that need to be taken has passed. In other words, there is a mismatch in timing between the environmental and electoral impact."
"Secondly, no one nation alone can resolve it. It has no definable boundaries. Short of international action commonly agreed and commonly followed through, it is hard even for a large country to make a difference on its own. "But there is no doubt that the time to act is now", he said.
"It is now that timely action can avert disaster."
Mr
The potential for innovation, for scientific discovery and for investment and growth was enormous, he said.
With the right framework for action, the very act of solving it could unleash a new and benign commercial force to take the action forward, providing jobs, technology spin-offs and new business opportunities as well as protecting the world we live in.
But Mr
PA