BackBlair wants climate change deal before exit
Blair wants climate change deal before exit
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Berlin, Germany: British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he was staking his remaining months in office on reaching a new international agreement on climate change.
After talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Blair said here he hoped to help thrash out compromises on a new accord to succeed the Kyoto Protocol governing reductions in greenhouse gases which expires in 2012.
“These next few months are absolutely crucial," Blair said on 13 February 2006.
One of the key issues was helping developing, fuel-hungry nations such as India and China to acquire the technology to control carbon dioxide emissions and use cleaner energies, he said.
“I think there is broad agreement in the world today on the threat that climate change poses to our environment and our planet."
Blair said however that it was hard to translate this broad support into an international agreement, because of the complexity of the technical issues involved.
“These technical questions we need to work on, we need to make sure that when we get to the point of political decisions we’re not lost in the technical work.
“Unless we get answers to some of these issues, it will be hard to get a political agreement."
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