A plan to save the planet or more hot air ?
NEW ZEALAND: Sailing around Auckland Harbour under a blue sky in the blistering sun, you could see why on this day and in this place Tony Blair expressed his wish that the climate would stay just as it it.
He and his wife Cherie celebrated their wedding anniversary with a tour on a luxury motor cruiser courtesy of a local millionaire publisher (Mr Blair is pictured right with his host and NZ PM Helen Clark). Hardly the sort of behaviour to win the approval of green campaigners but he hopes that they will approve of his call for a new international agreement to try to stop climate change.
The plan is simple enough :
- An international agreement that must include all the major developed economies - the US in particular - as well as the key developing nations - starting with China and India
- At its heart the goal of stabilising climate change and greenhouse gas emissions
Tony Blair insists that he's not abandoning or diluting the Kyoto agreement under which countries including Britain (but crucially not including America) agreed to meet targeted cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions.
But it's clear that he thinks there's no chance of chivvying, shaming or bullying the US - let alone China and India - to sign up. There is, he says, one self-evident truth - any deal that does not include those countries is pointless.
Yesterday in Australia - another country that refused to sign up to the Kyoto targets - the prime minister was told that even if they stopped ALL their greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, China's dizzying economic growth would fill the gap in less than 10 months.
Why, though, should these countries even consider a new deal? In America's case, Tony Blair's counting on worries about energy security - that is, the US's desire to end its dependence on oil from unstable parts of the globes. In China and India's case, he hopes that fear of deadly pollution will do the trick.
The rhetoric was ambitious today. Sceptics will point out that it comes the day after the government had to admit to being off target for CO2 emissions. Others will say that Tony Blair's caved in to the Americans. If he achieves what he set out today they may be silenced.
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