By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Oct 30, 9:53 AM ET



LONDON - Unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, a British government report said Monday, as the country launched a bid to convince doubters that environmentalism and economic growth can coincide.

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Prime Minister Tony Blair said unabated climate change would eventually cost the world the equivalent of between 5 percent and 20 percent of global gross domestic product each year. He called for "bold and decisive action" to cut carbon emissions and stem the worst of the temperature rise.

"It is not in doubt that, if the science is right, the consequences for our planet are literally disastrous," he said. "This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime."

The report emphasized that global warming can only be fought with the cooperation of major countries such as the United States and China, and represents a huge contrast to the Bush administration's wait-and-see global warming policies.

Sir Nicholas Stern, the senior government economist who wrote the report, said that acting now to cut greenhouse gas emissions would cost about 1 percent of global GDP each year. He recommended a "low-carbon global economy" through measures including taxation, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon trading.

"That is manageable," he said. "We can grow and be green."

President Bush kept America — by far the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming — out of the Kyoto international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, saying the pact would harm the U.S. economy. The international agreement was reached in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 and expires in 2012.

Blair, Bush's top ally in the Iraq war, has indicated that Bush's policies on climate change are unacceptable.

The prime minister made that clear when he signed an agreement this year with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to develop new technologies to combat the problem. The measure imposed the first emissions cap in the United States on utilities, refineries and manufacturing plants in a bid to curb the gases that scientists blame for warming the Earth.

Treasury Chief Gordon Brown, who is expected to replace Blair as prime minister next year, announced Monday that former Vice President Al Gore, who has emerged as a powerful environmental spokesman, would advise the British government on climate change.

Blair and the report also said that no matter what Britain, the United States and Japan do, the battle against global warming cannot succeed without deciding when and how to control the greenhouse gas emissions by such fast-industrializing giants as China and India.

Stern's 700-page report said evidence showed "that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth."

"Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century," he said.

The report said at current trends average global temperatures will rise by 3.6 to 5.4 degrees within the next 50 years or so, and the earth will experience several degrees more of warming if emissions continue to grow.

It said such warming could have effects such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, declining crop yields, drinking water shortages, higher death tolls from malnutrition and heat stress, and widespread outbreaks of malaria and dengue fever. Developing countries often would be the hardest hit.

The report acknowledged that its predictions regarding GDP relied on sparse data about high temperatures and developing countries, and placed monetary values on human health and the environment, "which is conceptually, ethically and empirically very difficult."

Brown said Britain would lead the international effort against climate change, establishing "an economy that is both pro-growth and pro-green." He called for Europe to cut its carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2020 and 60 percent by 2050.

Under the 1997 Kyoto accord, 35 industrialized nations committed to reducing emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

But Britain is one of only a handful of industrialized nations whose greenhouse gas emissions have fallen in the last decade and a half, the United Nations said Monday.

The U.N. said Germany's emissions dropped 17 percent between 1990 and 2004, Britain's by 14 percent and France's by almost 1 percent.

Overall, there was a 2.4 percent rise in emissions by 41 industrialized nations from 2000 to 2004, mostly because former Soviet-bloc countries, whose emissions declined in their economic downturn of the 1990s, increased emissions during the recent four-year period by 4.1 percent.

The British government is considering new "green taxes" on cheap airline flights, fuel and high-emission vehicles.

__________________
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

— Benjamin Franklin

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.

John Adams from the " Treaty of Tripoly, article 11

Any Comments?

__________________
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

— Benjamin Franklin

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.

John Adams from the " Treaty of Tripoly, article 11

Ok, here is my comments. First off it is a given that mankind has not been kind to our planet but can somebody provide me with proof that Global warming is real and the earth is not just going through a cyle right now? There was no proof in the posting that you provided.

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An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.

Read the Philip Cooney thread. It has some pro /con links. I believe as do my Science proefessors and NASA scientists that global warming is real.

Bush could sign the Kyoto treaty in the next 12 minutes, and people would STILL be unhappy....

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"A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done."
Fred Allen

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
George Bernard Shaw

"Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
John Galbraith

The conservatives and entrepenuers will save us. As some government official said about the ozone depletion problem when he said - it will stimulate the sale of sunglasses and sunscreen - it will be good for the economy. If you look on the bright(no pun intended) side, I'm sure there will be increased sales of bathing suits, ice makers and other products - good for the economy.

Ok... go on killing your children's future. I'll be dead and gone...

__________________
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

— Benjamin Franklin

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.

John Adams from the " Treaty of Tripoly, article 11

But is global warming man made?

It is also proven that 1,000 CE was warmer than now. The Vikings had colonies in Greenland. Romans grew grapes in Scotland.

It is well known that the world entered a "Little Ice Age" from about 1300 until about 1850.

It is further known that our sun has a slight variation in it's brightness and has bee getting brighter for the past 150 years. The total increase is less than 1% so far, but less than one percent of the total of the sun's radiation to earth is still a LOT.

Nor is it proven that an increase will be a disaster. It will lead to a larger cloud cover which will cause a decrease in the energy reaching the surface, so it may even out.

There are just too many unknowns. A constant is that the people who are demanding radical change also want to be the ones in charge of saying what changes should be made.

It's all over guys. Global warming is going to destory the earth within the next 10 years. But there is a way to stop this from happening. We must elect democrats. They are the only ones who can save us

What would the Democrats do to save the Earth?