Global Warming Environment

Speaking to reporters in Tokyo, Blair said his new report, Breaking the Climate Deadlock, was “designed to be a practical way through; not yet another campaigning polemic to wake the world up to the challenges of global warming. The world has woken up. Now it needs to know what to do.”

Blair, who is working with the Climate Group, a non-profit group of politicians and business leaders, said any solution “must be radical. It must put the world on a path away from carbon dependence to a new and green economy.”

The former prime minister said the current obsession with mid- and long-term targets for greenhouse gas emissions meant more immediate measures, such as capturing and storing carbon, and sharing clean technology, were being overlooked.

He conceded that the G8 leaders would not agree on a mid-term reductions target for around 2020 at Japan’s Hokkaido summit next month. Instead, he said, they should “describe a realistic pathway” towards future targets to be discussed at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen next year.

“We are not going to get agreement on interim targets, but we should put a plan in place that means we can get an interim target next year,” he said. “I think that’s more sensible than fixating on percentages. “We are talking of a global 2050 target of at least a 50% cut in emissions. But let’s be clear. This date is decades away and decades beyond the political life of any government.”

The G8+5 (leading emerging economies), which account for three-quarters of all global emissions, should focus on practical issues such as funding, the possible auctioning of carbon credits and access to carbon markets for developing countries, he said. Given that most of the new power stations being built in India and China will be coal-fired, Blair repeated his support for a dramatic expansion of nuclear power to help achieve reductions targets.

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