Tony Blair on Saturday urged the world’s heaviest polluters including the United States and China to agree to binding emissions cuts, saying failure to act on global warming would be “unforgivably irresponsible.” The former British prime minister is heading a new team of experts tasked with bridging the gaps in slow-moving negotiations to draft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol by the end of next year.
“We have reached the critical moment for the decision on climate change,” Blair told a meeting of senior officials from the world’s top 20 greenhouse gas emitters in suburban Tokyo.
“Even on the mildest application of precautionary principles, failure to act on climate change now would be deeply and unforgivably irresponsible,” he said.
But environmental activists who were inside the closed-door meeting said there was still a wide gap between industrial states and developing nations, which are concerned that stringent cuts could hurt their growth.
The weekend meeting is meant to pave the way for July’s summit of the Group of Eight wealthy nations on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
“The G8 summit this year at Hokkaido will be the date with destiny on the issue,” said Blair, who stepped down as prime minister last year after a decade in power.
Last year’s summit of the Group of Eight — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States — agreed to seriously consider a target of 50 percent cuts in emissions by 2050.
But there was no binding commitment and the base year for the reductions was ambiguous.
“The question now is, can we take it further? Can we agree on a binding global target of at least a 50 percent cut in emissions? Can we spell out the principles of a deal to do?” Blair said.
UN climate experts have recommended steep cuts in emissions to at least lessen the momentum of global warming, warning that rising temperatures spell devastating consequences for the ecosystem.
The United States has shunned the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that it is unfair by making no demands of fast-growing emitters such as China and India.
All sides, however, agreed in talks in December in Bali to be part of the negotiations to draft a successor to Kyoto, whose obligations run out at the end of 2012. The next negotiations start at the end of the month in Bangkok.
Japan, which lags behind in meeting its own Kyoto targets, proposed Saturday to set energy efficiency standards for each industry and share eco-friendly technology with developing countries.
But developing countries were sceptical and pressed their case that rich countries should make steeper cuts in gas emissions, according to environmentalists who were inside the closed-door meeting.
“They seemed worried that they might have obligations imposed on them and stressed that technological transfers must be accompanied by sufficient financial support,” said Midori Sasaki of the Geneva-based World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
Blair, who will head to China and India after the weekend talks, said both rich and developing nations had to move forward on global warming.
To realise the steep global cuts, “the emissions in the richer nations will have to fall close to zero and those in the poorer countries will have to, over time, fall as they industrialise,” Blair said.
Blair in 2005 launched the Group of 20 initiative on the environment which includes Group of Eight members as well as emerging economies. The 20 countries account for about 80 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions.
