OneWorld.net (U.S.)

WASHINGTON, D.C., Sep 15 (OneWorld) - U.S. President George W. Bush's closest foreign ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has pledged to press Washington to take the threat of global warming much more seriously.

In a major policy address in London Tuesday, Blair said he will use his position as next year's president of the Group of Eight most powerful nations to persuade Washington to rejoin international negotiations to curb emissions of greenhouse gases in order to reduce the speed at which the Earth's climate is changing.

Current emissions that are causing warming have "become alarming and was simply unsustainable in the long run," he declared, warning that the challenge posed by climate change was "so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence."

He also pointed to recent extreme weather events, from drought in southern Africa to the heat wave that some 26,000 lives in Europe last summer to this summer's devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean and Florida, as evidence of the potential enormity of the problem.

"(T)here is no doubt that the time to act is now," he said. "It is now that timely action can avert disaster. It is now that, with foresight and will, such action can be taken without disturbing the essence of our way of life, by adjusting behavior, not altering it entirely."

Environmental groups praised the speech but stressed they now look to see whether Blair followed through with concrete actions.

"This was an emotional speech which promises strong diplomacy," said Stephen Tindale, direct of Greenpeace UK, "but we need to bring forward the domestic actions to the next three months to give (Britain) the authority it needs to pull it off."

"His warning will carry greater weight if it is backed by firm action to tackle the problem at home," said Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth. "Since 1997, New Labour (Blair's party) has been able to get away with a lackluster environmental program, not least because the official opposition has been asleep on the job."

Blair, who has come under fire from his own party members and the two main opposition parties, for deferring to Bush in the Iraq war, has been looking for ways to establish his independence from the U.S. president, particularly as the situation in Iraq has appeared to steadily deteriorate.

In that respect, Britain's support for the Kyoto Protocol, the 1998 accord that requires industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to roughly seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012, has been a clear point of disagreement. After former President Bill Clinton signed the accord in late 2000, Bush withdrew from the Protocol negotiations in early 2001, complaining that compliance could cause too much hardship for the U.S. economy. The United States by itself emits about 25 percent of the world's total annual emissions.

Blair's main rival, Conservative leader Michael Howard, who himself delivered a strong speech on global warming Monday, pointed explicitly to Blair's inability to persuade Bush to take a more flexible position. "It is very disappointing that Tony Blair has not succeeded in persuading the present administration that the challenge of global warming is one that cannot be shirked," he mocked.

Bush has not deviated from his original opposition to the Kyoto Protocol that more research is needed to determine the relationship between warming and greenhouse emissions before mandatory curbs on emissions can be put in place. His energy policy has emphasized the importance of increasing the supply of energy sources, including fossil fuels, like coal, oil and gas, whose burning causes greenhouse emissions.

Sen. John Kerry has put greater emphasis on conservation, energy efficiency, and much greater government investment in renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar power. Since the primary season, however, he has downplayed his previous positions in favor enforcing caps on emissions, in part because of concern that a strong public position could alienate voters in swing states, such as coal-producing West Virginia and automobile-producing Michigan. Kerry has also declined to support the Kyoto Protocol.

Britain is considered a global leader in reducing emissions and, according to Blair, has already reduced them by 14 percent since Labour came to power in 1997 . In the last election, Blair promised to reduce emissions by 20 percent by 2005.

To meet that goal and keep Britain on track for meetings its Kyoto target of a 12.5 percent reduction from 1990 levels, Blair said he will tighten building regulations and work with the aviation industry, a growing source of emissions, to reduce them. At the same time, he did not exclude building more nuclear-energy plants that are almost as controversial in Britain as in the U.S.

But his main theme Tuesday was the urgency of taking action in light of the possible "catastrophic consequences of climate change." He said the threat was closer than many believed. "I mean in the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own," he declared.

As the president of the G-8, Blair said he will seek to strike an agreement among them that emissions do indeed cause climate change and the enormity of the potential threat and on what technological measures were available to both curb emissions and reduce the threat. He said he would also seek to persuade developing countries - particularly China and India - to join the industrialized world in reducing emissions.

The Bush administration has opposed the Kyoto Protocol in part because developing countries are not required to reduce emissions.

Many developing countries claim that they were responsible only for a tiny fraction of the emissions that have contributed to global warming over the past century and thus should not be exempt, for at least some period of time, from reducing emissions.

Blair himself noted this argument in his speech. "It is the poorest countries in the world that will suffer most. Yet it is they who have contributed least to the problem," he said, adding, "That is why the world's richest nations in the G-8 have a responsibility to lead the way."