The head of the world’s preeminent organization of climate scientists said yesterday that incoming U.S. President Barack Obama’s stated emissions targets need to be strengthened to deal with the climate threat.

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said, “President-elect Obama’s goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 falls short of the response needed by world leaders to meet the challenge of reducing emissions to levels that will actually spare us the worst effects of climate change.”

The comments were made at an event held by the Worldwatch Institute yesterday afternoon in Washington to discuss its recently-released report, State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World, which finds the world will have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions more drastically than has been widely predicted, even going into negative emissions by 2050 to avoid catastrophic disruption to the world’s climate.

“The world is desperately looking for U.S. leadership to slow emissions and create a green economy,” said Christopher Flavin, President of the Worldwatch Institute. “With the Copenhagen climate conference rapidly approaching, this will be a crucial early test for President Obama.”

Yes we can continue to hold Obama accountable to the promises he made on his campaign trail. Just because it looks like for once in the last 20 some years we might have a president that is interested in leading this country to something better doesn’t mean we can all put our head in the sand and hope for the best.