Royal Dutch Shell Chair Sees "Very Little Hope" w/o GHG Cuts - AJC

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LONDON (AP)--A chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. said in comments published Thursday that he sees ``very little hope for the world'' unless there is a reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions.

Lord Oxburgh, chairman of Shell Transport and Trading Co. PLC, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant's British wing, told The Guardian newspaper that he was worried by the threat of climate change.

``No one can be comfortable at the prospect of continuing to pump out the amounts of carbon dioxide that we are at present,'' Oxburgh was quoted as saying. ``People are going to go on allowing this atmospheric carbon dioxide to build up, with consequences that we really can't predict, but are probably not good.''

Oxburgh, a geologist, said the solution lay in sequestration _ capturing carbon dioxide gas so it can be stored rather than escaping into the atmosphere. But the technique is expensive and unwieldy. "Sequestration is difficult,'' Oxburgh acknowledged. ``But if we don't have sequestration I see very little hope for the world.''

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