Downing Street Says » Climate Change

Asked what was the reaction to the Stern Report, the PMOS said it was difficult to talk about the Stern Report without revealing the contents of it. However, the Cabinet recognised this was a very serious piece of work about a very serious subject and very clear thinking about the economic benefits of dealing with climate change now compared to the costs of not dealing with it in the not so distant future.

Asked whether the Government would put the argument abroad, the PMOS said we had already seen the influence this country had had on the whole climate change debate. Indeed, as David Miliband had said this morning at Cabinet, this was no longer just a debate about climate change and the environment. This was a debate about climate change and energy security. This was an issue that affected every aspect of Government and every aspect of life. Therefore, we believed that we should have a discussion with the international community as a whole. Indeed the only way in which we would get progress on the issue of climate change, energy security and all the other allied issues, was by persuading people globally to act. The EU Summit last week was an example of how the debate and the argument on climate change had moved on substantially. It was no longer the case that you had to argue that you had to look to the future beyond Kyoto. That was now accepted by a very strong consensus.

Asked if the Prime Minister thought that climate change needed to underline not just measures for the individual but also industry and the emerging economies, the PMOS said that as the Prime Minister had said all the way through, we believed you would not be able to persuade people to deal with climate change as an issue if you were harming your economy in doing so. That was the case whether you talked about individuals or indeed countries such as India, China or developed countries. Therefore, what we needed to do was outline the technological measures that we needed to deal with energy security, climate change and move forward all together. This was not an issue you could move forward on one front and leave the other behind. Asked who was in charge of the Government’s environment policy, the PMOS said the Government as a whole was pushing forward the debate from different roles and perspectives. This had been clear with issues in the past, but also on the reaction to the Stern Report today.

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» Thursday, October 26, 2006

Climate Change

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