Blair Wants To Speed Up Talks On Post-Kyoto Agreement

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LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair, armed with evidence of the disastrous impact of ignoring climate change, will talk to Germany's leader on Friday about speeding up a drive for a new international pact against global warming. Blair's meeting in London with German Chancellor Angela Merkel comes before United Nations talks in Kenya next week to hunt for new ways to fight climate change.

But experts say it may take three years or more to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N. plan for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases which runs out in 2012. Britain hopes a report it commissioned, which found the costs of inaction in the face of global warming far outweighed those of taking urgent measures, will galvanise efforts to reach a broad new international agreement. Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern's report, published this week, said failure to act could plunge the world into an economic crisis on a par with the 1930s Depression.

Merkel, a former environment minister, has said she will make fighting climate change a priority next year when Germany takes over the presidency of both the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrialised nations and the European Union. "He (Blair) will want to discuss with her how to accelerate discussions on a post-2012 framework on climate change and whether the G8 under the Germans could agree the major elements of that framework," a spokesman for Blair said.

Blair says a post-Kyoto framework must include the United States as well as big developing nations China and India.

EDIT

Yeah, you be sure and let us know how that works out, Poodle.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-11-03T005807Z_01_L02243068_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT-BRITAIN-GERMANY-DC.XML