Tony Blair Outlines Seven Policies to Stave Off Climate Change

Seven policies focused on reducing deforestation, improving energy efficiency and stimulating renewable power can set the world on the path it needs to fight global warming, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

The measures, all in use today, need to be ramped up so the planet can cut annual greenhouse-gas output 19 billion tons by 2020, a study by Blair’s office and the London-based Climate Group said. Countries need to spend an annual average of $1 trillion over the next four decades, the report said.
The seven short-term measures proposed by today’s report are: incentives to stimulate wind and solar power; improving the efficiency of machines used by industry; better building codes; reducing the fuel consumption of vehicles; cutting the carbon content of fuel; setting new energy standards for domestic appliances; and cutting back on the level of deforestation.

If enacted, they could achieve almost three-fourths of the emissions cuts needed by 2020, Blair said. At the same time, countries should build up a global carbon market and invest in technologies to make longer-term reductions, including nuclear power, techniques to capture CO2 and store it underground, or carbon capture and storage, and advanced solar power, he said.

About 1.4 percent of global economic output, or an annual $1 trillion, is needed until 2050 to deliver the technology needed to reduce CO2, the report said. Still, the resulting efficiency improvements will save money and clean-energy sources could prove more stable than oil, which peaked a year ago at $147 a barrel and now trades at less than half that, Blair said.

“We should remember $100 per barrel oil because if we go back to those levels in the future, then that changes dramatically the whole economics of investing in clean energy,” Blair said. “Of course we will need to invest up front — there will be costs associated with that — but in the medium and long term, it makes economic as well as climate sense.”

Bloomberg