Gordon Brown (UK Exchequer) To Launch Global Survey Of Climate Damage

[hatrack]

Gordon Brown is launching an unprecedented investigation into the damage global warming will do to Britain and the world, and the cost of bringing it under control, in a direct challenge to President George Bush. The inquiry, which marks the Chancellor's growing preoccupation with climate change, will examine the President's assertion that tackling it would ruin economies and wipe out jobs.

It comes on the heels of a snub to Britain, and Tony Blair, by Mr Bush, who last week announced a new "partnership" on tackling global warming with Australia, India, China, South Korea and Japan. He kept this initiative secret from Mr Blair, failing even to mention it at the Gleneagles summit three weeks ago. The initiative, widely seen as an attempt to destabilise negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, avoids targets for cutting the pollution that causes climate change, preferring vague undertakings about the exchange of cleaner technologies.

Mr Brown, who has become increasingly concerned about the impact that droughts and floods are having on deepening Third World poverty, has asked Sir Nicholas Stern, the Second Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, to head the investigation.

It will examine the economic cost to Britain, particularly in increased flood defences and insurance against extreme weather, as the climate heats up, and attempt to quantify the devastating effects on developing countries, and the world as a whole.

EDIT

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/article302708.ece

[RONSTOO]

1. I still dont understand

why Britain was left out...