[Committee] Fwd: Tony Blair on CC

[S.J. Stretton]

Dear Colleagues,
Please find included an excerpt from Tony Blair's speech at 4th
Ministerial Meeting of the G8 Gleneagles Dialogue on  Climate Change,
Clean Energy and Sustainable Development - 15 March 2008. It is very
close to our aims.
Best wishes,
Stephen

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dave Hampton - Carbon Coach <dave at carboncoach.com>

 I am happy to forward this excerpt from (and link to full text of) Tony
 Blair speech  . .

 "We have reached the critical moment of decision on climate change.
 There are few if any, genuine doubters left. Even on the mildest
 application of the precautionary principles, failure to act on climate
 change now would be deeply and unforgivably irresponsible. It's true
 that the issue is now centre stage. But, the amount of emissions, adding
 to the stock already in the atmosphere, continues to rise, 30% of that
 rise still coming from the developed world.

 So though it now occupies its rightful place at the top of the agenda
 and though there is acute awareness, from political leaders and the
 public, that it is time to act, the unavoidable fact is that the problem
 continues to get worse.

 What is more, when we examine future trends, the reality of the scale of
 change necessary to bring about a reversal of the rise and deal with the
 problem, becomes uncomfortably obvious.

 *Per capita GHG emissions are over 20 tonnes per year in the USA; in
 Europe and Japan over 10 tonnes; in China close to 5 tonnes. Some
 estimate they will need to be around 2-2.5 tonnes as a world average by
 2050 to allow the necessary reduction of 50% in the global total. But
 since the poorer nations will see their emissions rise as they
 industrialize and since the world population may well grow from 6 to 9
 billion, the emissions in the richer nations will have to fall close to
 zero and those in the poorer countries, will have overtime to fall as
 they industrialize.*

 Put it like that and you can see the vast nature of the challenge. In
 fact, I would go further; the scale of what is needed is so great that
 the purpose of any global action is not to ameliorate or to make better
 our carbon dependence; it is to transform the nature of economies and
 societies in terms of carbon consumption and emissions. If the average
 person in the US is say, to emit per capita, one tenth of what they do
 today and those in the UK or Japan one fifth, we're not talking of
 adjustment, we're talking about a revolution.

 Which brings me to this inescapable conclusion. To transform the way the
 world grows, is unlikely to be done by measures, however well meaning,
 taken by individual people, companies and countries. I'm not saying
 these things are worthless. Far from it. They create innovation. They
 create awareness of the options. And taken together, have a real impact
 on the problem. And in theory, each nation, acting unilaterally could
 take action that together amounted to the necessary change. But in
 practice that is unlikely. In practice, without collective action,
 collectively agreed, at a global level, the revolution is unlikely to
 occur.

 Hence the need for a global deal. The purpose of such a deal is to set
 an overall global target for the world; and to establish a framework for
 its implementation, one that is effective, efficient and equitable."

 Whole speech at: -
 http://tonyblairoffice.org/2008/03/tony-blair-speech-to-gleneagle.html