World News 15-09-2004 Global Warming Catastrophe Ahead who: Tony Blair what: Says he will use G8 presidency to combat global warming where: LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: "Tony Blair warned last night that climate change will result in `catastrophic consequences` for the world unless the major economies agree on immediate and decisive action to combat it," says The Independent. Giving the Prince of Wales Business and the Environment Programme anniversary lecture in Whitehall, he said that "within the lifetime of his children - and possibly his own - the impact on the world could be so far-reaching and `irreversible in its destructive power` that it altered human existence radically," says The Telegraph. The prime minister said "no one nation alone" can reverse the trend, reports The Scotsman`s environment correspondent, James Reynolds, and he pledged that Britain`s year in the presidency of the G8 nations would be used "to advance work on promoting the development and uptake of cleaner energy technologies begun under the French presidency in 2003 and continued by the US this year". "Once again what we have had from Mr Blair are fine words but no action," says Tory leader Michael Howard, quoted by the BBC. "He talked about the challenge of global warming but you would never guess from his speech that carbon emissions - which were falling before Labour came to government - have been rising again since." Elsewhere, The Guardian reports the conservative Party proposal that high-tech environmentally friendly homes of the future should be "zero rated for stamp duty". [... more]

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