Time running out for post-Kyoto climate deal-Blair
Source: Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau BERLIN, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Time is running out for world powers to strike a deal on protecting the environment once the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions runs out in 2012, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday. "In respect of climate change, I would say there is no greater challenge that we face," Blair told reporters after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "If we want to get an agreement that is going to be able to be put into place post 2012 -- it took a lot of negotiating to get Kyoto and it will take a lot of negotiating to get this -- now is the time to do it," said Blair. Blair, who has just months left in office, said there was broad agreement about the threat posed to the world by climate change but working out the technical details of any new set of emissions reduction targets would be extremely difficult. He said the technical details -- stabilisation goals, measuring them, setting carbon prices, getting the right market mechanism -- needed to be discussed and an agreement reached. "We need to make sure that when we get to the point of political decision, we're not just then beginning the technical work. And unless we can find the right answers to some of these technical issues, it will be get to get a political agreement." Merkel, presiding over Germany's dual presidencies of the Group of Eight (G8) club of industrialised nations and the European Union, reiterated that climate change was a top item on the agendas of both presidencies. She said there would be a G8 conference in May to discuss the technical details so an agreement on issues such as climate change could be worked out ahead of the G8 summit in June. Blair said one of the key issues was making sure the United States -- which pulled out of Kyoto in 2001 -- and the world's most powerful developing nations are on board for any post-Kyoto deal. For this reason, the G8's so-called "outreach" programme of informal talks with China, India, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico provided an ideal forum for the G8 countries to work out a deal that could have global acceptance, he said. Any deal worked among the so-called "G8 + 5" would be put to a broader international meeting to take place in Bali, Indonesia, at the end of the year. Merkel also reiterated that she wanted the EU to set a goal of having 20 percent of all its energy come from renewable resources by 2020. Blair said he supported this goal. Britain put global warming at the top of the diplomatic agenda during its presidency of the G8 in 2005. The G8 members are the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia.
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