Britain to use climate change report to push for global deal -

LONDON (AFP) - 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.
The government has already pledged to pass a bill that will put into law its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 percent 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' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> 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' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> 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.
Germany takes over both the G8 and
European Union' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> European Union presidencies next year, and Britain will lobby for climate change to be at the top of both agendas. A spokeswoman for Blair's Downing Street office, speaking to AFP, was unable to confirm the meeting.
Citing unnamed sources in Blair's office, meanwhile, 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' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> United Nations and the World Bank to better equip them to oversee an expanded carbon-trading scheme -- one of the central planks of Stern's report.
The Stern review estimates that worldwide inaction could cost the equivalent of between five and 20 percent of global gross domestic product every year, forever.
By contrast, the cost of action is equivalent to one percent of
GDP' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> GDP, a "manageable" increase equivalent to a one-off one percent goods price increase, Stern said.
Carbon pricing and policies to support low-carbon technologies are among the possible solutions proposed by the economist, who also advocated expanding international frameworks on technology cooperation, deforestation and adaptation to climate change.
In an effort to foster an international consensus, Stern will himself embark on a tour of China, India, the United States and Australia to set out his position, and Brown has appointed former US vice president turned environmental campaigner
Al Gore' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Al Gore his adviser on green issues.
British newspapers said the report sets the ball squarely in the court of the world's political leaders.
The Guardian noted grimly that what "is lacking is for the world's politicians to think beyond the confines of the next four or five years, and to consider a statesmanlike span of 50 years or more, because what is at stake is ... the survival of the planet."
Another left-wing daily, The Independent, which dedicated its first 10 pages to the Stern review, echoed those views, with its editorial concluding that "what is required now is a generation of politicians around the world with the courage to do what is necessary."
The Times, a right-of-centre paper, called on Britain and other Western nations to take the lead, noting that international cooperation should not mean that all countries contribute equally to fighting climate change.
"Developing countries such as India and China may be the fastest growing contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, but this must be seen in context," the newspaper's editorial read.
"It is incumbent on the West to take a lead."
The newspapers did not reach agreement, however, on how much Britain and governments around the world should intervene in terms of taxation and other issues -- The Daily Telegraph, for example, titled its leader: "Why governments can't save the planet".
The right-wing daily called instead for governments to implement a framework within which business can take the lead, pointing out that climate change is "a global rather than national problem and should be treated as such."
"That means business -- not bureaucrats -- are best placed to take the lead role within a broad framework set by national governments."
They all managed to agree, though, that time was of the essence, with the Financial Times concluding that while the 1997 Kyoto agreement, which aimed to cut greenhouse gases, took five years to negotiate, "the world, and its atmosphere, cannot afford to wait that long again."