UK party leaders target climate

By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent

Both leaders agree the issue is urgent, but differ on policy

In a rare show of unanimity the British prime minister and the leader of the opposition are both to insist on the urgency of tackling climate change.

The Conservative leader Michael Howard will on 13 September spell out his way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The next day Tony Blair will offer a very different vision of how to fulfil the UK's international commitments.

The speeches are likely to be their main interventions on the environment before the UK's next general election.

Transatlantic reproach

Mr Howard will be speaking to the Environment Forum, hosted by the Green Alliance and ERM, an environmental consultancy.

He will call for international leadership to give effect to the Kyoto Protocol, the global treaty on cutting greenhouse emissions.

The protocol needs Russia to ratify it before it can enter into force, and Russian intentions remain unclear.

Mr Howard will criticise the prime minister for not doing enough to engage the US in tackling climate change: President George W Bush said soon after entering the White House that the US would never ratify the treaty.

The Conservative leader will be critical of Mr Bush himself, and will say he has failed to back the UK's stand on climate despite British support for the US in the war on terror.

Nuclear silence

He intends also to stress the need for greater efficiency in the use of energy, particularly by domestic consumers, and for a range of renewable energy sources, including wave power.

Significantly, Mr Howard will say nothing about nuclear power. There is a growing chorus of voices in the UK urging a nuclear renaissance, despite deep public misgivings and uncertainty over technical questions.

Mr Blair's speech on 14 September is to a business audience to mark the tenth anniversary of the Prince of Wales's Business and the Environment Programme.

The prime minister is known to want to use the UK's position next year as chair of the G8 group of leading industrialised countries, and its forthcoming presidency of the European Union, to push to reduce greenhouse emissions.

But the government has acknowledged that present policies will not let it achieve its commitment to reduce UK carbon dioxide emissions by 20% on their 1990 levels by 2010.

Mr Blair is keen to get the G8 leaders to agree to try to prevent global average temperatures rising beyond a set level.

One UN scenario says any rise beyond 2C would pose a significant risk, and would probably cause loss to some ecosystems.