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MAKUHARI, Japan Tony Blair on Saturday urged the world’s heaviest
polluters including the United States and China to agree to binding
emissions cuts, saying failure to act on global warming would be
“unforgivably irresponsible.”
The former British prime minister is heading a
new team of experts tasked with bridging the gaps in slow-moving
negotiations to draft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol by the end
of next year.
“We have reached the critical moment for the
decision on climate change,” Blair told a meeting of senior
officials from the world’s top 20 greenhouse gas emitters in
suburban Tokyo.
“Even on the mildest application of the
precautionary principles, failure to act on climate change now would
be deeply and unforgivably irresponsible,” he said.
The weekend meeting is meant to pave the way for
July’s summit of the Group of Eight wealthy nations on the
northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
“The G8 summit this year will be the date with
destiny on the issue,” said Blair, who stepped down as prime
minister last year after a decade in power.
“The question now is, can we take it further?
Can we agree on a binding global target of at least a 50 percent cut
in emissions? Can we spell out the principles of a deal to do?”
Blair said.
Last year’s summit of the Group of
Eight—Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and
the United States—agreed to seriously consider a target of 50
percent cuts in emissions by 2050.
-- AFP
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