Speeches

Tony Blair announces ‘Breaking the Climate Deadlock’ project

Hello. Finally everyone has woken up to the fact that climate change is a serious problem and is getting worse. At the big G8 summit of last year everybody agreed that climate change is a serious problem, everybody agreed we need a new global deal once the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and everybody agreed that everybody should be part of it - including America and China.

What this means is that there is a consensus now right across the world that we need a new global deal and at the heart of it there has got to be a substantial cut in emissions.

The difficult thing is: what type of deal? That's the work that I'm working on with a group of experts that have been convened by The Climate Group, which is a business body here in the UK but also across the water in the Atlantic, and what we are looking at specifically is: what is the global deal that makes the difference?

We have got all sorts of bodies: the EU, us here in the UK, other countries individually round the world, have set their own targets, are taking certain action and that's all great.

But, unless there is a concerted global deal where there is a framework that everyone agrees to, and everyone knows the direction of travel, and everybody knows that their behavior can be adjusted and changed according to that framework, then it isn't going to work.

And what we know at the moment is that whatever deals are being done on a unilateral basis, in individual countries, the amount of emissions are still rising.

So the work that we are doing will look specifically at: what is the nature and what are the principles that underpin that new global deal.

Secondly, what is the best way of developing and then transferring the science and technology necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions substantially by the amount they really need to be cut?

Thirdly, how do we make sure we finance, create the finance flows, that are going to be necessary in order to make this work?

Now we believe that there is a huge economic opportunity: for countries, for business, for people in taking action on climate change.

But it won't be maximized unless there is that true global deal, one with everybody in it, one that has in its heart a substantial cut in emissions and that most crucially has the means of doing it.

And it's the focus on the 'how' not 'whether' - because we all accept 'whether' - but the 'how' that we will be working on, now and in the months to come.

Thank you.

More on Tony Blair's role in the climate deadlock project.