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Climate change initiatives can work, Blair says+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)SYDNEY, March 28_(Kyodo) _ British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in Canberra on Tuesday that there is a need for a more "realistic" international approach to combating climate change. "What we've got to do is get a real dose of realism into this debate," Blair said at a press conference after talks with Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Wrapping up a four-day visit to Australia, Blair said a new international accord could bring together the United Nation's Kyoto Protocol, the U.S.-led Asia-Pacific Climate Change Partnership, the Group of Eight climate change initiative and the U.N.-sponsored Montreal climate conference. "We haven't reached a new agreement post Kyoto, but I think it is possible to build out of the initiatives that are happening today a more realistic framework that gives us a real chance of being able to reduce emissions...and protect the climate," Blair said. Britain signed the Kyoto agreement, which aims at limiting carbon emissions to reduce to global warming, in 1997. But Australia and the United States have refused to sign the accord. Blair added it is crucial to get China and the United States involved in the climate change debate. But Howard claimed that even if Australia "stopped all emissions right now, it would take China 10 months to make up for it. This is a measure of how unreal it is to have an arrangement that doesn't involve the major polluters." Howard and Blair also used the Canberra talks to discuss Iraq, Afghanistan and global terrorism. Blair will travel to New Zealand later Tuesday where he will be a special guest speaker, via video link, at the Climate Change and Governance Conference in Wellington. He will then head to Indonesia on Wednesday before returning to Britain. |