news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061030/ap_on_sc/britain_global_warming_10
AP Gore to advise British on global warming By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 30, 7:07 AM ET LONDON - Unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, a major British report said Monday.
Tony Blair said unabated climate change would eventually cost the world between 5 percent and 20 percent of global gross domestic product each year. He called for "bold and decisive action" to cut carbon dioxide emissions and stem the worst of the temperature rise. The report is expected to increase pressure on the Bush administration -- which never approved the Kyoto Protocol climate-change accord -- to step up its efforts to fight global warming.
"The evidence shows that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth," said Stern's 700-page report, an effort to quantify the economic cost of climate change. "Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century," he added. Blair said the scientific community agrees that the world is warming, and that greenhouse gas emissions are largely to blame. "It is not in doubt that if the science is right, the consequences for our planet are literally disastrous," he said. "This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime." these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible," he added. Stern said the world must shift to a "low-carbon global economy" through measures including taxation, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide emission trading. Under the 1997 Kyoto accord, 35 industrialized nations committed to reducing emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
The UN said Germany's emissions dropped 17 percent between 1990 and 2004, Britain's by 14 percent and France's by almost 1 percent. Overall, there was a 24 percent rise in emissions by 41 industrialized nations. Brown said Britain would lead the international effort against climate change, establishing "an economy that is both pro-growth and pro-green." He called for Europe to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent by 2020 and 60 percent by 2050. The British government is considering new "green taxes" on cheap airline flights, fuel and high-emission vehicles.
A cloud of waste gas billows out of chimney stacks at a wood processing factory belonging to Switzerland's Krono group in the eastern German village of Heiligengrabe near Berlin in this June 2, 2004 file photograph. Ignoring climate change could lead to economic upheaval on the scale of the 1930s Depression, underlining the need for urgent action to combat global warming, a British report on the costs of climate change says.
Blair Warns About Global Warming British Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced a report Monday in London that says unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression.
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