Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian scientist who chairs the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a mild-mannered man.
But he did not pull any punches in Bangkok at a press conference to launch the report of its third working group on how global warming might be mitigated. "If we continue to do what we are doing now, we are in deep trouble", he warned.
The picture painted by the IPCC in its Fouth Assessment of Climate Change, in the three reports released so far this year, is the culmination of six years work by 450 lead authors, 800 contributing authors and 2,500 expert scientific reviewers from 130 countries. It can truly be said to represent the current state of understanding of global warming and its potentially catastrophic consequences as well as the multitude of options available to governments, business and industry, and ordinary citizens worldwide to ensure that the gloomiest scenarios are not translated into grim reality.
The task we all face is not going to be easy, because it will essentially involve changing the foundations on which the global economy is based from fossil fuels to a whole range of renewables, some tried and tested, others still embryonic and experimental. It is not impossible.
As the IPCC's latest report makes clear, there is no time to lose; global greenhouse gas emissions need to peak as early as 2015 and then start falling, if we are to avoid the worst effects or a rapidly warming world. But just as the British government's Stern Review found, the IPCC has also concluded that tackling climate change is economically affordable, amounting to a reduction in global GDP of less than 3 per cent in 2030. In other words, the transition which the world must make towards a carbon-neutral economy won't break the bank. What would break it, however, is the incalculable cost of further delay.
The first priority, as Dr Pachauri emphasised in Bangkok , is to put a realistic price on carbon, so that alternatives such as solar, wind, wave, geothermal and biomass energy sources with nil or negligible greenhouse gas emissions are given preferential treatment over coal, gas, oil and even peat. Biofuels already enjoy tax advantages, even though serious questions have been raised about the value of their contribution to climate protection, but the outgoing Government baulked at the imposition of carbon taxes in 2004 and only started taking the whole issue seriously in recent months.
If the IPCC's findings are to be heeded, whoever forms the next administration will have to put climate change, and measures to deal with the threat it represents, much closer to the top of the political agenda.