LONDON, Oct 31: Britain will use a major report on climate change to push for a global deal to slash carbon emissions within two years and for major reform of international institutions to oversee the report's recommendations, it was reported here on Tuesday.
The government has already pledged to pass a bill that will put into law its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, and has also said it is considering the possibility of implementing so-called green taxes to encourage people to be more energy-efficient.
But government ministers, along with the author of the report, were united in their belief that international agreement was necessary for any change to occur.
“It has to be international action,” said Nicholas Stern, the former World Bank chief economist who authored the 600-page report that analysed the economic consequences of global warming.
“Countries have to get together and work out what they're going to do together,” he told the BBC on Monday.
The broadcaster said that Prime Minister Tony Blair will start the campaign for a new international agreement on Friday, in a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Blair said on Monday that negotiations started at last year's G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, were now “key” to securing action after the Kyoto agreement, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gases, expires in 2012.
Citing unnamed sources in Mr Blair's office, The Guardian daily said that the prime minister wanted an agreement that tackled targets for stabilising carbon emissions, a global fund for new green technologies, and a regime to cap and trade emissions.
He is said to want the agreement to include China, India and the United States -- three critical states who failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
The Guardian also said, citing unnamed finance ministry sources, that finance minister Gordon Brown will push for reform of the United Nations and the World Bank to better equip them to oversee an expanded carbon-trading scheme.—AFP
