Delegates from more than 100 countries are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, this week to approve a new report on the effects of climate change. Known as the synthesis report, the draft warns an ongoing rise in greenhouse gas emissions is “increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts.” Denmark’s energy minister, Rasmus Helveg Petersen, opened the meeting.

Rasmus Helveg Petersen: “Today we can measure the rising temperatures, the rising seas and our rising insurance bills, and tomorrow we’ll have to measure our rising debt to the future generations. As fossil fuel is burning, so is the platform underneath us. We can stop the fire, or we can jump into the sea — and the first solution does cost money, and the second seems to be free, but it isn’t.”

The meeting in Copenhagen comes ahead of the 2014 U.N. climate summit in December in Lima, Peru. Democracy Now! will be broadcasting live from the summit.