After four days of talks in Bangkok, Thailand - government officials from more than a hundred countries, economists, and scientists all agreed that the world needs to reduce harmful emissions to limit centuries of rising temperature and seas caused by the buildup of heat-trapping emissions in the air.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their final report which stated that the slowing of emissions in the soonest possible time could lead to a stabilization of the concentration of carbon dioxide later in the century. Currently, the concentration of CO2 is at 380 parts per million - which has increased by more than a third since the start of the industrial revolution. If we don't act now, this figure could easily double within decades.

The panel agreed that drastic changes in technologies and policies should be implemented in the next 25 years. Two and a half decades aren't enough as a century-long transition to new energy sources that come with no climate impacts should also be done. Panel member Adil Najam said that:

We can no longer make the excuse that we need to wait for more science, or the excuse that we need to wait for more technologies and policy knowledge...To me the big message is that we now have both and we do not need to wait any longer.

Here in the early years of the 21st century, we’re looking for an energy revolution that’s as comprehensive as the one that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century when we went from gaslight and horse-drawn carriages to light bulbs and automobiles. In 1905, only 3 percent of homes had electricity. Right now, 3 percent is about the same range as the amount of renewable energy we have today. None of us can predict the future any more than we could in 1905, but that suggests to me it may not be impossible to make that kind of revolution again.