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Gov. Brown, UN Official Talk Climate 'Threat' In LA

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com/AP) — California Governor Jerry Brown met with a top United Nations delegation Monday to discuss the impacts of climate change downtown Los Angeles.

Brown sat down with United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres and leading scientists at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to discuss the impacts of global warming and the need for action at all levels of government.

"I've called you here to look at these dinosaurs that you might reflect on your own thinking, which is becoming increasingly obsolete as we have to confront the climate change," Brown told reporters.

"If we do not do something radically different, we are heading to catastrophe," said Figueres. "Think of it truly as a big, huge ship, where a small little signal from the captain right now takes you, over time, in a completely different direction."

Afterward Brown told reporters that California's vast resources allow it to negotiate with other states as well as foreign governments like Mexico and China.

Last month, Brown met with international leaders from 11 other states and provinces to sign a first-of-its-kind agreement to limit the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius – the warming threshold at which scientists say there will likely be catastrophic climate disruptions.

97 percent of the world's climate scientists believe man-made global warming is real, according to NASA.

"(The United States) also has a huge capacity with the private sector here, to be the world's per-capita solution-bringer, the best," Figueres said. "Where else do you have the kind of corporate ingenuity, the kind of capital, the kind of policy possibility that you have in the United States."

Brown is promoting pending legislation to require that half the state's electricity come from renewable sources by 2050.

The meeting comes as a prelude of sorts to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will be held from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11 and seeks to reach a "legally binding agreement that will enable the world to combat climate change effectively and boost the transition towards resilient, low-carbon societies and economies."

(TM and © Copyright 2015 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2015 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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