The IEA, in its annual World Energy Outlook released Wednesday, said that the world will lose the chance to limit warming if it doesn't act now.
The IEA's members include 28 consuming nations. It was formed in response to the oil crisis in the 1970s, but since then its mandate has expanded beyond energy security to include environmental awareness.
The agency prescribed what needs to be done to cap global temperature increases at two degrees above preindustrial levels and predicted the consequences if those steps aren't taken.
A two-degree increase is the threshold beyond which some scientists have said catastrophic changes could be triggered.
The warning came a day after Canada's Environment Minister Peter Kent acknowledged in a speech in Toronto that his government expects to face international pressure at upcoming climate change talks over its refusal to sign on for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
Kent said Canada has already declared that it will hold to that position "however acute the international pressure." Read the full report here.
Source: CBC News.
