A two-day meeting of environment and energy ministers in London last week has done much to couple economic and development issues to climate change. Participants from 20 developed and developing countries with significant energy needs met to discuss energy policy over the next 50 years. Britain called the meeting as current president of the G8 nations, with UK environment secretary Margaret Beckett hosting the event. However, the thunder was delivered not by an environment or energy secretary but by chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown.
He left delegates from countries including the US, China, Australia, Mexico, Russia and others in no doubt that future economic growth and third world development were inextricably linked to taking action on climate change. If the world's economies were to flourish, if global poverty was to be banished, then greater care must be taken of the natural environment and its resources, Mr Brown told delegates. Soil erosion, marine stock depletion, water scarcity, air pollution and other environmental impacts were being driven by climate change and industrialisation, and the poorest countries of the world would suffer most, he said.
His arguments - including the contention that the industrialised nations and all G8 partners must lead the charge against climate change on behalf of weaker nations - must have seemed like a slap in the face to US delegates, if not others. The US steadfastly refuses to pursue low carbon initiatives such as the Kyoto agreement, claiming it will harm the economy rather than help it. President Bush and his chief environmental adviser James Connaughton argue that energy efficiency is enough, combined with the application of "technology, technology, technology".
Connaughton's three words heard on the BBC last week somehow ring hollow given the stark images depicting the impact of climate change placed at the entrance to the meeting by its organisers, the UK department of the environment, food and rural affairs. One showed the top of Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro almost completely cleared of its 11,000-year-old ice cap, melted away by rising temperatures. Another showed feeble attempts to hold back the seas surrounding the Marshal Islands, certain to be swamped by rising sea levels driven by climate change.
Admirably Britain is using its back-to-back presidencies of the G8 and, later this year, of the EU to drive home the economic and developmental issues associated with climate change. It is commendable work and the world must act on foot of it.