Even a seasoned political operator like Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair will have found it difficult to swallow the relative failure of this year's Group of Eight summit meeting to produce any significant movement on the issue of climate change. Blair began his campaign for a different outcome more than a year ago. When he took over the presidency of the G8 group of most industrialised countries at the end of last year's summit in the United States, he made it clear that achieving a political consensus on the need to move forward would be one of the top priorities of his term of office (the other being the need to tackle poverty in Africa).
But the odds were stacked against him from the beginning. The main target of Blair's efforts has been the United States, or rather the Republican administration led by president George W. Bush. And the administration, reflecting deep scepticism among a large swathe of US voters towards any international agreement that could impinge on its energy-intensive lifestyle, has seen little reason to shift its position. British negotiators remained optimistic, at least on the surface, in the months leading up to this year's meeting at the beginning of July in Gleneagles, Scotland. There was hope that at a minimum the United States could be persuaded to sign up to a document that committed developed countries to significantly increase their expenditure on climate-related research, particularly in the field of non-renewable energy.
Even this proved to be too much for the US administration, apparently averse to making any kind of financial commitment that, in its eyes, would bind its hand in its dealings with Congress. So the commitment to boosting energy research was watered down, as was a section on managing the impact of climate change, which had talked about the resulting floods, droughts, crop failures and rising sea levels.
The final communiqué merely states that the G8 leaders recognise the need for "increased commitment to international cooperation in and coordination of research and development of energy technologies". They also pledge "to continue to take forward research, development and diffusion of energy technologies", with a particular emphasis on the use of hydrogen as an "energy carrier" -- a favourite topic of Bush.
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http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=245902&area=/insight/insight__international/
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