My message to Tony Blair yesterday at the Bundestag was clear – don’t go wobbly on us on global warming. Blair, despite his titanic mistake on Iraq, has been right on global warming and was instrumental in putting it on the G-8 agenda, over the objections of President Bush. Now we need him to be aggressive, diligent, and persuasive when the G-8 meets in Germany this week.
I talked with Blair while I was in Berlin addressing GLOBE, an organization of legislators from around the world. I had been asked at the last minute to go to Berlin and give an American response to Blair’s address, which would be his first comments following President Bush’s suggestion of a new global warming negotiating track last week. Blair spoke eloquently about the threat we all face and proposed an international effort that was both binding, comprehensive, and embodied the principle of “a common responsibility with proportional effort” amongst the nations of the world. He supported the creation of a global cap and trade emissions trading regime, a global CO2 reduction target, and suite of other actions that will obviously be necessary.
My response to him before the 200 in the crowd was that although America and Britain could never agree on the proper meaning of the term “football” we could and must unite in a new energy economy that can tame global warming. I said that in America, the days of denial were over and the days of action had begun, that we were poised to move on aggressive legislation along the lines of my New Apollo Energy Bill, and that if people didn’t believe you could have economic growth and CO2 reductions, quoting Kennedy at the Berlin Wall, “Lasst uns nach Berlin Kommen,” let them come to Berlin.
That was the first German I had ever spoken and apparently it came out OK.
In closing, I thought I would have bit of fun, and turned to Blair and asked if I could tender him a question, since we do not have question time in the U.S. House of Representatives. He chuckled, said sure, and I asked him what he considered the best way to try and convince George Bush that we needed a cap and trade system and other measures to grow a new energy economy. He replied that he suggests using the same arguments he would use with anyone. First, the science is so clear that in any other field of endeavor no one could possibly deny the need for bold action. Second, he said that it is abundantly clear that we have to have these economic signals to steer the investments that are so needed to help new clean energy technologies develop.
So I hope Prime Minister Blair does not go “wobbly” and really puts President Bush’s feet to the fire. The world needs more than rhetoric in energy. It needs more than frilly aspiration. We need binding action so that all the genius we now see blossoming is actually brought into the marketplace. We cannot let this revolution be slowed down by the virus of vagueness.
