Britain to study carbon cuts as deep as 80 percent
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Britain to study carbon cuts as deep as 80 percent*
19 Nov 2007 15:18:13 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Britain will study whether it can commit to
cutting its carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050, Prime
Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday in his first major speech on the
environment since taking office this year.
Brown has been challenged to take a strong stance on global warming by
an opposition Conservative Party that increasingly stresses
environmentalism. His popularity has sunk in recent weeks to the lowest
since he took over from Tony Blair in June.
Brown's government published a draft Climate Change Bill a week ago
committing to a 60 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, but
environmentalist groups have said it should look at even deeper cuts.
The government will set up an independent committee to study whether it
should commit to even deeper cuts of 80 percent.
"Our vision has one overriding aim: holding the rise in global average
temperature to no more than 2 degrees centigrade. This requires global
greenhouse gas emissions to peak within the next 10 to 15 years and be
cut at least by half by 2050," Brown told a meeting hosted by
environment group WWF.
"A global carbon market is at the heart of our approach -- not the old
way of rigid regulation but the modern way: harnessing the power of the
market to set a global price for carbon," he added.
TOUGH CURBS
Brown said it was vital that the world's developed nations, who have
produced most of the climate changing carbon gases, take the lead in
committing to tough curbs on their emissions -- including the United
States which has so far refused.
He also endorsed the European Union's commitment in March this year to
getting 20 percent of primary energy from renewables by 2020 -- a goal
that some elements of the government have tried to back away from.
Scientists say average world temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and
4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power
and transport, causing floods, droughts, famines and putting millions of
lives at risk.
But while noting the scale and urgency of the crisis, Brown also
underscored the job and business opportunities it offered.
"Globally, the overall added value of the low carbon energy sector could
be as high as 3 trillion dollars per year worldwide by 2050," he said.
The industry could create 25 million new jobs, including a million in
Britain.
The speech comes two weeks before U.N. environment ministers meet on the
Indonesian island of Bali to try to launch a rapid round of negotiations
on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol carbon cutting accord that expires
in 2012. (Reporting by Jeremy Lovell; editing by Peter Millership)