Blair backs away from carbon targets and leans towards technology

Washington (Platts)--2Nov2005

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has backed away from reliance on
binding targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, saying that
such mechanisms get people "very nervous and very worried."

     In closing remarks Wednesday at an international climate change
conference in London, Blair said the evidence on climate change is "getting
stronger and not weaker." Blair's comments were posted on the website for his
office. He also said it has been "extremely important to have the Kyoto
Protocol," which requires industrial countries to reduce their emissions an
average of 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012. 

     However, Blair said the "moment we get to specific frameworks, and in
particular talk about targets, people fear some external force [is going] to
impose an internal target that is going to restrict your economic growth."

     The US has rejected the Kyoto Protocol and developing countries have
resisted taking on binding targets.

     Citing the divisions over Kyoto, Blair said: "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, but all economies know that the
sensible long term way of developing is to do it on a sustainable basis."

    Rather than discuss targets and timetables, Blair said after 2012, "we
need to find a better, and more sensitive set of mechanism to deal with this
problem," which, in part, would involve the private sector in "developing the
technology and science that we need in a way that allows us then to transfer
that technology and share it between the developed and developing world."

     Blair's emphasis on technology development and transfer echoes the
position taken by the US. His remarks drew fire from the environmental group
Friends of the Earth, which said that moving away from emission reduction
targets could have "disastrous consequences."

     Blair's remarks come just a month before the United Nations' climate
change conference in Montreal, which is slated to begin discussions on a
post-2012 plan to combat global warming.

--Gerry Karey, gerry_karey@platts.com

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