Blair spells out new greenprint for Britain
By Charles Clover

Prime Ministers speech to the CBI/Green Alliance conference on the environment [24 Oct '00] - 10 Downing Street

TONY BLAIR admitted yesterday that the need to tackle environmental issues such as climate change was increasingly urgent but the solutions on offer did not measure up to the scale of the problems.

In his first big speech on the environment for three years, he told an audience of the Confederation of British Industry and the Green Alliance that he wanted to "push green issues back up the political agenda" and "reawaken the challenge" of tackling environmental destruction at home and abroad. 

His speech, entitled "Richer and Greener", called for environmental protection to be seen as "a business opportunity," a market worth £245 billion, as large as the world market for pharmaceuticals or aerospace.

 He said: "Where 15 years ago many thought that there would always be a trade-off between progress and the environment, we can now see a way though. What becomes clear is that to preserve what we value most - our local environment, the countryside around us - we must protect the whole Earth, and do so by pioneering new ways of building, working, living."

 He admitted in response to questions: "The problems are more urgent than ever and the scale of the solutions doesn't match up to the scale of the problems." Mr Blair said the greatest threat to the environment was climate change, and the Government hoped to take a leading role in climate change negotiations in the Hague next month.

 He endorsed the warning from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution that Britain would have to cut the carbon dioxide it produces by 60 per cent by 2050 if the earth's systems were to stand a chance of recovering.

 He announced a new £50 million a year Carbon Trust, giving capital allowances for investments in energy-saving technologies, which would be introduced from April, partly funded from the climate change levy.

 He also announced proposals to spend £50 million from the National Lottery's New Opportunities Fund to support the development of offshore wind farms and biomass fuel. A further £50 million from the fund would help to provide kerbside recycling for 700,000 households.

 Next spring, he said, Britain would launch the world's first national emissions-trading system. This voluntary system would set overall limits on emissions for CO₂ producers entering the system and permit them to trade emissions allowances among themselves. Britain would also set up an office from April to export Britain's low-carbon technologies. The Prime Minister said he planned to attend the Earth Summit in 2002 and would encourage other world leaders to join him. 

Mr Blair - who avoided justifying the present level of fuel taxes as an environmental measure - acknowledged "hard choices ahead". In a hint that the Government plans to relieve pressure on those families hardest hit by fuel prices, he said ordinary people suffered from air pollution but: "We also know many of those same families depend on their car, especially in rural areas, to work, to take children to school, for leisure. We need to find a way through this for them, not simply pose two extremes, one of which is environmentally dangerous, the other of which is unrealistic."

 He said: "Making public transport more attractive will take us only so far. The long-term solution is to make vehicles cleaner and more fuel efficient."

 Turning to the controversy over Government housing forecasts, Mr Blair said the Government was balancing the huge pressure to build in the South-East with the necessity to protect the countryside. On genetically modified foods he said: "I am neither pro nor anti. I simply say let us evaluate the technology, test it, and then make a judgment, rather than ban it before we even look at it."

 Although Labour had made a lot of progress - Britain was on track to meet its Kyoto targets, air quality was improving, London had the cleanest river of any big city - Mr Blair gave a warning that we had to face a "stark trend".

 He said: "Neither we here in Britain, nor our partners abroad, have succeeded in reversing the overall destructive trend. The environmental challenge continues to grow and become more urgent." There were alarming changes in the atmosphere, in global temperatures, in sea levels and the ozone layer. In Britain we faced the prospect of exotic diseases becoming commonplace, increased levels of skin cancer, floods in some years, droughts in others and low lying areas being swallowed by the sea.