Tony Blair on climate change.

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Blair signals shift over climate change

David Adam, environment correspondent
Wednesday November 2, 2005
The Guardian



Tony Blair addresses the G8 climate change summit in London. Photograph: Jane Mingay/AP



Tony Blair appeared last night to undermine more than 15 years of climate change negotiations when he signalled a shift away from a target-based approach to cutting greenhouse emissions. Speaking at the end of the first day of a summit in London of environment and energy ministers, the prime minister said that legally binding targets to reduce pollution made people "very nervous and very worried".

He said when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012, the world would need a more sensitive framework for tackling global warming. "People fear some external force is going to impose some internal target on you ... to restrict your economic growth," he said. "I think in the world after 2012 we need to find a better, more sensitive set of mechanisms to deal with this problem." His words come in the build-up to UN talks in Montreal this month on how to combat global warming after Kyoto. "The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge," he said.

"If we can deal with this in the right way and have this informal mechanism then I think we can find a way of meeting what I believe is the clear desire of our people - which is to find a way of combining rising living standards with the responsibility to protect our environment."
The statements echoed sentiments Mr Blair expressed informally at a meeting organised by Bill Clinton in New York recently, when he said he was "changing my thinking" on the best way to tackle climate change. Mr Blair's office said at the time his remarks had been misinterpreted and they did not signal that the UK was changing its position or adopting an attitude similar to that held by the US.

The US has refused to sign up to Kyoto because it says caps on pollution would damage its economy. George Bush also objects to big developing countries, such as China and India, being exempt. Mr Blair has acknowledged he will not overcome such opposition and has instead focused on the need to develop green technology.

Downing Street said Mr Blair's comments were not a policy shift. They pointed to an article he wrote in Sunday's Observer in which he said climate change would be addressed by a "robust, inclusive and binding international treaty".

Environmental campaigners called on Mr Blair to clarify his position. Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said: "We need to understand what he means. It's seismic in climate change politics and threatens 15 years' worth of negotiations."

guardian.co.uk