Tony Blair has revealed he is to lead new international team to help free up the political log jam currently hampering efforts to agree a global deal on climate change.
Speaking to The Guardian ahead of his keynote address at this weekend's G20 meeting in Japan, the former prime minister said he was confident he could help broker a deal to cut carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 that would have the backing of both the US and China.
"There is a deadlock. Everyone is agreed where we want to get to, but unless you agree on the framework for getting there, you are left with a process and not a result," he told the newspaper. "The fact of the matter is that if we do not take substantial action over the next two years, then by 2020 we will thinking seriously about adaptation rather than prevention."
Blair said that he convened the team – which includes the author of the Stern Review Sir Nicholas Stern and is backed by campaigning body The Climate Group – last summer and that it would publish an interim report on its findings at the G8 summit of industrialised nations in Japan this July. From there the group will assess the continuing differences between the big economies and begin work on economic models to show that fears over the costs involved in mitigating climate change can be overcome.
The former prime minister offered scant details on what an eventual international agreement might look like, but he reiterated his view that technological advances rather than attempts to curb consumption will lie at the heart of any successful deal.
"The one thing I am absolutely sure of is that we are not going to get the action necessary by telling people not to consume," he said. "The Chinese and Indian governments are determined to grow their economies. They have hundreds of millions of very poor people – they are going to industrialise, they are going to raise their living standards, and quite right too."
The news comes as European leaders met in Brussels yesterday to discuss the timeline for implementing the European Commission's ambitious plan to slash carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.
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