Dangerous climate change will be "locked in" within little more than five years and there are few reasons to hope of international action to stop this happening, said the International Energy Agency Wednesday.

To prevent average global temperatures rising more than 2 Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the long term, which is widely seen as the safe limit, the world would have to make immediate and drastic changes to its energy and industrial policies, the IEA said in its annual long-term forecast.

That looks increasingly unlikely given the current economic problems and the move away from low-carbon nuclear power in some countries after the Fukushima disaster, it said.

The report is intended as a wake-up call for the governments of many developed countries, where promises to invest to curb carbon dioxide emissions have failed to acquire legislative urgency. It also shows the huge challenge posed by rapidly rising use of fossil fuels, particularly coal, in fast-growing emerging economies.

"The door to reach two degrees is about to close. In 2017 it will be closed forever," said Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA, in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. To stop this happening would require a swift, legally binding agreement to put a price on carbon, Birol said.

World leaders will meet later this month in Durban , South Africa , to discuss action to curb emissions. "Given the current preoccupation of governments with the financial crisis, it's difficult to say that the wind is blowing in the right direction," Birol said.

The IEA said the problem is twofold. Carbon dioxide emissions, largely from coal burning in India and China , continue to grow rapidly. They increased by an "almost unprecedented" 5.3% to 30.4 billion metric tons in 2010, capping a decade of booming coal use, the IEA said.

At the same time, many countries are reappraising their commitment to renewable energy, because of the cost of subsidies, or to nuclear power, because of the nuclear disaster in Japan earlier this year, Birol said.

If every country were to back away from nuclear power, its generation capacity would fall 15% by 2035, the IEA said. The gap would largely be filled by carbon-spewing coal and gas plants, it said.

Even if all countries follow through on promises they have already made to curb emissions and invest in clean energy and nuclear power, many of which have been placed in doubt by the current economic distress, temperatures will still eventually rise by 3.5 Celsius, the IEA said.

An increase of this size would have severe consequences including a sea level rise of up to 2 meters causing dislocation of human settlements; and drought, floods and heat waves that would severely affect food production, rates of disease and mortality, the IEA said.

Limiting the increase in temperatures to 2 Celsius would require the reversal of several of the strongest trends in energy consumption.

The use of both coal and oil, which together provided 60% of world energy in 2009, would need to start falling by 2016, the IEA said. Under current trends, coal and oil use are forecast to rise by 60% and 25% respectively between 2009 and 2035.

At the same time, rate of increase in energy efficiency and the amount of energy generated by wind, wave and solar and nuclear power will have to increase dramatically, the IEA said. These changes would require an additional $10.2 trillion of net investment in new energy infrastructure, it said.

Investment on this huge scale is not impossible, said the IEA's deputy Executive Director, Richard Jones. "Most of the investment in electricity generation is happening outside of the OECD, particularly in China and India ," he said. "Those countries are still growing and they haven't been nearly as affected by the global slowdown as OECD countries."

The money is concentrated in the right people's hands, but mobilizing it before the 2017 deadline will take "significant political will," he said.

He was not optimistic that politicians will rise to the task. "[A temperature increase of] somewhere between 2 Celsius and 3.5 Celsuis is probably inevitable," Jones said.

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