4 June 2007Larry Elliott and Matthew Taylor
Tony Blair has issued a stark warning to fellow world leaders ahead of this week's G8 summit on climate change, telling them it would be unforgivable if they failed to agree on ways to tackle global warming.
Speaking in Berlin after talks with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, he said that it would be the people in the world's poorest countries who suffered most from rising global temperatures: the summit offered the chance of a "historic breakthrough".
"We have to make quicker and bolder progress, if we are to respond to the scale of the threat we face and the consequences if we fail to act. The science tells us time is running out ...
"Given the evidence, given the scale of the disaster should that evidence be correct, it would be grossly, unforgivably irresponsible not to act."
Yesterday's talks were designed to give momentum to the meeting starting on Wednesday at Heiligendamm, a Baltic resort in Germany, between G8 leaders - the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia - and those of the "plus five" states: China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico.
Mr Blair said: "We now must move quickly. We simply don't have the luxury of the five years it took us to agree Kyoto. That is why the G8 plus 5 discussions are so important in the coming days. Climate change poses a huge challenge. But together we can rise to this challenge, and ensure we don't inflict lasting and irreversible damage on our world. Now is the time to act. It is our duty to do so."
Mr Blair also praised George Bush, who last week called for a "new global framework" on climate change, describing it as a first sign that the US president was ready to take part in international agreements to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
Environmentalists criticised Mr Bush's proposal for a separate summit in the autumn, claiming that it in fact constituted an attempt to divert or frustrate the established international process. the outgoing prime minister said: "President Bush's announcement a few days ago is an important step forward. The US for the first time wants to be part of a framework which commits the world to agreeing a long-term global goal to reduce emissions and national targets below that."
Ms Merkel described the Bush initiative as very welcome; but cautioned it would have to be part of the UN treaty-negotiating framework on climate change, which produced the 1997 Kyoto protocol. "The US initiatives on climate protections are very welcome to us, under the condition that they are channeled into the framework of the UN programme," she said during the press conference at her office with Mr Blair.
He went on to say that his visit to Africa last week had highlighted for him global warming's impact on the poorest nations.
"The evidence suggests it will be the countries which are already the poorest which will be hit the hardest. They will also obviously lack the resources to help alleviate some of the worst effects of climate change, so their citizens will doubly suffer ... Slight changes in rainfall and temperature could lead to 80 million more people in Africa living in malaria-affected areas."
The summit would build on the commitment to Africa made at Gleneagles, but needed to be "bolder". He had been told while in Africa that, for example, universal access to HIV/Aids treatment would save millions of lives: "It's an indication of why it's so important when we are able to act, that we do act ... So it's not just a question of recommitting to Gleneagles, it's also a question of showing how we are going to meet those Gleneagles commitments in expressed form."
