Prime Minister

We are committed to the Kyoto Protocol. We believe it is essential that we have that implemented. We in our country will abide by our Kyoto targets, but I just want to make one point to you. When I asked for an analysis to be done by David King and his colleagues of what the true scale of the challenge was, we learned that even if we were to implem... ent the Kyoto Protocol, it falls significantly short of what we will need over the next half century if we are to tackle this problem seriously and properly. So even, and this is a tall order in some ways at the moment, if we succeed in getting support for the Kyoto Protocol, we are still, even having done that, only in the position of having achieved a first step. It will be an important recognition, but it is only a first step and we need to be building a clearer understanding of the fact that even with Kyoto we are still a long way short of what we actually need to do. And we've got to build support in the political institutions of which we're a part in order to make sure that that case is properly understood. I think we have to make sure that this occupies, as an issue, a central place in political decision making beyond any election or parliamentary cycle. It's beyond the life of any government. It's beyond the life of any passing political phase. It has to be there, central in the politics of each country, built up not just from support within government, but from support within civic society over a period of time. The second point is about the conflict between the supposition that we need to grow continually and that we cannot grow unless we degrade our environment. That is the importance of a Climate Group that involves not just states and cities but also business so that there are practical, clear examples of how good environmental policy is also good business policy and is right for growth. If you look in the 12 years 1990 to 2002, we in Britain cut our emissions by about 15 percent whilst we were growing at 30 percent. It is possible to do. Showing that ...Read More