John Vidal reports from Gleneagles on a disappointing communique on climate change, which, although it at last puts the issue firmly on the international agenda, fails to address specific solutions or set timetables for action.
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Transcript:
We've just had the official communique of the G8 on climate change, although it was semi-leaked last night. It's really very disappointing. I think most people would say that it doesn't get to the parts that refresh.
Basically it's a technology agreement. All countries have agreed to pursue fossil fuel-free technology. This is obviously a good thing and much much needed. Quite a lot of information was given for the first time: there's 16 trillion dollars of investment which is going to be needed in energy over the next 25 years; a 60% increase in energy is going to be needed around the world over the next 25 years.
Obviously technology is going to be key. But all the green groups and critics are saying: "This is all very well, but there are no targets, no timetables whatsoever."
In other words politically everyone is off the hook. This means that countries can go ahead at their own pace. It also means it's going to be of tremendous advantage to America especially because they are in the lead with the new technology. Nothing wrong with that of course, but what about Africa? What about the countries which are already feeling the first serious effects of climate change? There's seems to be nothing on this whatever. There's airy talk about exchange of technologies, but nothing concrete.
I think this is the problem - an enormous amount of waffle, and very little heat. On the other hand it is not the disaster we expected only a couple of days ago. Bush seemed to be digging his heels in and it seemed to be impossible even to get the US to accept that man-made climate change is happening. This document goes some way towards redressing that. There's now no split within G8, it's just a watered down version. They accept that it's happening, they accept that it's happening quite fast, but they agree to disagree, and so there's no mention of the science, if you like. But it's not a disaster.
I think they've pushed the issue forward to the next meeting. Russia takes over next year and they have committed themselves to energy as the top of their agenda - that's obviously going to be key as well. And Japan has agreed to take it on in 2008. So it's now absolutely firmly on the world agenda.
It's not top - terrorism is top - but climate change is now one of the top two or three of the issues on the world leaders' agendas. That is the good news. The bad news is that there is nothing concrete. There is nothing specific. There is nothing to which people can point and say yes we are definitely going to do this and that. It's all hope and heat and hot air, and not much else at the moment.
