MONTREAL – Global warming is accelerating and exceeding the most pessimistic predictions, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change said Tuesday.

Yvo de Boer cited a new U.S. National Academy of Sciences study which stated carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 3.1 per cent per year between 2000 and 2004 where they had only increased 1.1 per cent per year during the 1990s.

"That takes you well beyond the worst case scenario of the intergovernmental panel on climate change," de Boer told an audience in a speech to mark international biodiversity day.

"To use a bad analogy, climate change is now in overdrive."

The Dutch diplomat stressed the urgency of the situation and said the energy needs of the planet require total investments of US $20 trillion during the next 20 years.

"If we invest that $20 trillion badly, in the absence of political direction, CO2 emissions will increase by 60 per cent by 2030 instead of decrease globally by 60 per cent in 2030."

De Boer noted that a new coal-fired power station opens every three to five days in China without any kind of environmental policy.

Earlier this month, de Boer criticized the federal government's environmental plan as being less ambitious than the Kyoto protocol on climate change but was more diplomatic on Tuesday with Environment Minister John Baird at his side.

Ottawa's plan is ambitious, he said, "but it's not enough to meet Kyoto commitments in 2012," he said. "That's a statement of fact, not a criticism."

Baird, for his part, blamed the previous Liberal government for inaction on the environment.

Other concerns about the environment were also voiced at the conference.

Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the biological diversity convention, said that about 100 plant and animal species disappear each year, mainly due to climate change.

He pointed out that the species are key to helping the planet adapt to climate change.

The federal government announced Tuesday a $4.5 million program to protect endangered species and their habitats although Baird was unable to say exactly how the money would be spent.