3 June 2007
Tony Blair travelled to Berlin for talks with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, three days ahead of the G8 summit.
Parts of this transcript may have been edited
Read the transcript
This meeting comes at a critical moment, with just days to go before the G8.
G8 leaders and leaders from major developing countries - China, India, South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico - could agree an historic breakthrough on climate change that would allow the UN negotiations in Bali later in the year to begin substantive work on a new Climate Change accord.
As representatives of millions of people your message to them will be critical.
Globe has such a long and proud record of campaigning on environment issues and on drawing the world’s attention to the threat of climate change. You have helped put this issue at the top of the international agenda.
And we have come a long way in a very short time. I remember Summits when this issue was hardly mentioned. And many thought it strange I made it a central focus of our G8 and EU presidencies in 2005. Now it is inconceivable a meeting of global leaders could ignore climate change.
Concerns about energy have also helped spur action. The threat of energy insecurity has come together with climate change to give even more urgency to our actions to move towards a low carbon economy that de-links growth from emissions.
But 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.
We now have an overwhelming consensus that mankind’s activity is altering our climate.
The facts are barely any longer in dispute, the last serious doubts have been removed.
Largely because of industrialisation and deforestation, CO2 levels in our atmosphere are already 35 per cent higher than before the Industrial Revolution and growing by the year.
Average global temperatures have risen by 0.4C over the last three decades alone - a rate of change unprecedented throughout human civilisation.
The UN’s Inter-Governmental panel has warned that, without a reduction in the rate the world burns fossil fuels, an increase in temperature ten times as much is likely over the next hundred years.
The impact of such a temperature rise on extreme weather, on sea levels, flooding, famine, and disease would be terrible - affecting every continent and every country.
The evidence suggests that 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 - I saw this first hand on my recent trip to Africa. Climate change is already affecting millions of people as rains decrease, lakes dry up and diseases like malaria spread. Slight changes in rainfall and temperature could lead to 80 million more people in Africa living in malaria affected areas.
…And the impact, through forced migration, increased conflict and unrest will be felt in the developed world far beyond poor country borders.
Even more alarming is the warning that without urgent, collective action within the next few years, the rise in temperature may be simply irreversible.
Our failure to act would leave future generations with a terrible legacy with potentially catastrophic consequences for the environment, our economy and our way of life.
We also know, thanks to the work of Sir Nicholas Stern, that the cost of early action to prevent the worst effects of climate change will be far less than if we wait.
In his authoritative report, Sir Nicholas found that delay might mean the cost of tackling the disruption to people and economies would be at least five per cent - and possible as much as 20 per cent - of the world’s output.
In contrast, he estimated that the cost of action to halt and reverse climate change to be just 1 per cent of global GDP.
None of these predictions are exact. But given the evidence, given the scale of the disaster should that evidence be correct, it would be grossly, unforgivably irresponsible not to act.
This need not be at the expense of economic growth.
In the UK, we are already exposed the false choice between growth and the environment.
Our economy has grown by 25 per cent since 1997 while cutting our emissions by 7 per cent.
We have hundreds of thousands more jobs - and many of them in cutting edge green industries.
The world over, we need to move quickly to create more energy efficient businesses, homes, products and travel.
As well as reducing demand for energy, we need to switch to more low carbon energy sources - expanding existing renewable provision and developing new technologies such as carbon capture.
We need, in effect, to work and live differently at local, national and global levels.
The UK will continue to give a strong lead on climate change.
The publication of our Climate Change Bill earlier this year set out our aim to be the leading low carbon country and to help lead others to a low carbon world.
The Bill makes the UK the first country in the world to set a legal framework for its commitments and actions on climate change.
It puts into law our target of reducing CO2 emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 - and establishes binding five year carbon budgets to ensure we reach it.
The result will be, at home, a long-term framework to encourage and support action and investment- by this and future Governments, by business and by individuals - to meet the challenge of climate change. Our recent energy policy also sets out how we will further invest in renewables and energy efficiency and the importance of nuclear power to meet our energy and climate goals.
And in Europe, we have already seen in the last few months bold progress with agreement to cut our emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, and 30% as part of global agreement and tough new targets on renewables and energy efficiency. And Europe has already set up a carbon market through the EU ETS. My vision is to build on this by establishing a truly global carbon market with linked cap and trade schemes in developed countries, and efforts by developing countries, on a differentiated basis, such as sectoral targets. This will lead to increased flows of resources to help developing countries invest in clean technology.
There is increasing agreement, too, across the world on the steps we need to take and the mechanisms we need to put in place to meet this challenge.
What is now required is the courage and commitment to make the right decisions and see them through.
Angela Merkel’s outstanding leadership has now given us a huge opportunity to make real progress towards these goals at the G8 summit.
And 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.
Chancellor Merkel and I are now working hard to build on this momentum in the last days before Heiligendamm.
At the G8 we need to agree the elements of a future framework. This would allow the UN talks to accelerate and reach earlier agreement, so that we have a framework for after Kyoto in place by 2009. These elements should include:
- A long term global goal for reducing substantially greenhouse gas emissions.
- An acceptance of the need to develop a global carbon market and price through emissions trading, and other market mechanisms. Not only will carbon markets stimulate investment in developed countries, but through mechanisms like the Clean Development Mechanism, lead to large flows of resources into clean technologies in developing countries at a time when billions of dollars of investment decisions are being made.
- Increased investment by governments in technology and agreements to share it.
- Measures to help poor countries adapt to the unavoidable consequences of climate change.
- Positive incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation.
We know must move quickly.
We simply don’t have the luxury of the five years it took to achieve 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.
delicious
digg
facebook
