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Multinational Fora

The Guardian, By Paul Brown, environment correspondent in Maputo, September 2, 2002

The particular reference to export credits appear as follows in this article:
Blair "also provided an incentive to British exporters of such technology by announcing £50m a year in export credit guarantees earmarked for renewables."

Tony Blair last night launched an unexpected broadside against George Bush over climate change and said the leader of the world's most polluting nation must be persuaded to change his ways.

In a speech in Maputo, Mozambique, delivered 12 hours before arriving in Johannesburg for the earth summit, Mr Blair made combating climate change his major theme and reiterated his support for the Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, a course Mr Bush has rejected.

This was a calculated rebuff to the American president, who, having repudiated the Kyoto agreement, has instructed his team at the earth summit to remove all mention of it from the final 30,000-word "plan of action" being negotiated there.

Mr Blair, aware of the US pressure to "lose Kyoto", decided to embarrass Mr Bush by emphasising its importance.

But what makes it the more surprising is that his aides appeared to be emphasising the split with Washington. Last night the strategy was being seen as a clear attempt to demonstrate to a home audience that Britain is not slavishly loyal to the United States.

While Britain may be maintaining its controversial "shoulder to shoulder" position over the possibility of military action against Saddam Hussein, Downing Street will hope Mr Blair's tough criticism over Kyoto will show he is not cowed by Washington.

Mr Blair also announced that the UK would back potentially ground-breaking technologies to show how business could not just survive but prosper on the back of a sound environmental policy - something Mr Bush and his backers in the fossil fuel lobby claim is not possible.

In what aides said was intended as a direct message to the White House, Mr Blair said that Kyoto was not enough. At best it would mean a reduction of 1% in global greenhouse gas emissions; what was needed was a 60% reduction.

"In truth Kyoto is not radical enough. Yet it is, at present, the most that is politically doable and even then the largest nation, the US, stands outside it. They accept the science but believe the targets are unachievable without unacceptable economic consequences."

The prime minister went on to say that the best way of challenging Mr Bush's view was to prove that science and technology, combined with market incentives, could be harnessed to change behaviour and so combat climate change.

He announced new research and development programmes on grounding breaking technologies such as fuel cells in cars, which produce water as a waste product rather than greenhouse gases.

Mr Blair mentioned technologies such as offshore wind turbines and converting household and other waste to methane to generate electricity, and, for the first time, tidal energy.

He also provided an incentive to British exporters of such technology by announcing £50m a year in export credit guarantees earmarked for renewables.

He said he would consult partners in G8, including the US, about his Kyoto message and the need to expand the "revolutionary role of science and technology" and come back with specific proposals.

He said: "Economic growth and protecting the environment can be compatible. But we need a step-change in our understanding of the science and technology capable of doing it. If we want to do more than Kyoto, we have to show it can be done and provide the incentives and commitments to achieve it.

"Science and technology are the key to the door. Of course we then require the political will to go through it. But it would help if countries sceptical of the benefits of action on climate change could see how it could be gone through."

Mr Blair's words were met with scepticism by some green campaigners in Britain. The Green party, publishing a dossier on Labour's environmental thinking, pointed out that the Department for Trade and Industry had secured only £38m, barely a tenth of the £350m it asked for, for renewable energy projects in the 2002 spending review.

But Mr Blair also admonished the green and development groups at the earth summit for being overcritical of big business.

He said: "Without business there is no economic growth and no development. Business cannot determine the pace of action to combat environmental degradation.

"But cutting business out of the solution is foolish, shortsighted and self-defeating," he said.