Politics: Blair to call for action over global warming

Tony Blair will signal moves to tackle climate change in his speech tomorrow at Labour's conference in Brighton. Fran Abrams has discovered there are whispers that the Government may be backsliding on promises made earlier this year. But is the Prime Minister simply delivering a shot across the bows of colleagues less serious about the environment?

Britain must hold a national debate on the problem of global warming leading to major policy moves on the issue, the Prime Minister will tell the Labour Party conference in his tomorrow.

He will publish a report by the government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Robert May, which signals that by the middle of the next century there will be twice as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there was before the industrial revolution. Temperatures, up by one degree celsius in 100 years, will go up by more in the next 50, it says.

Although the Prime Minister will not actually announce any policy initiatives, the fact that he will address the issue is being portrayed as a commitment to do so soon. It was also revealed on the weekend that the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, has already ordered a review of taxes on North Sea oil.

But some doubts have already crept in, and environmentalists now view the next world climate summit in Kyoto, Japan, in December as a major test for the Government.

In June, Mr Blair announced at a United Nations summit in New York that Britain would cut carbon dioxide emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010. But in a recent letter to a campaigner, he said his policy would be "determined on the basis of what is agreed at Kyoto".

The Kyoto meeting might set easier targets than those already announced in Britain. However, a spokeswoman for the environment department last night said the target would stand regardless of what happened in Japan. But targets on other emissions might be altered by it, she said.

Experts believe confusion has emerged because officials in some departments are less keen to set tough targets than the Government is. There has also been criticism from environmentalists of the Government's decision to cut VAT on fuel to five per cent. This, they say, will increase consumption.

There are also signs that Britain's carbon dioxide emissions are rising again after falling during the recession and after pit closures. But officials say we will still meet our targets.

Suggestions on how Britain should cut pollution range from the radical to the merely practical. Tony Juniper, the campaigns director of Friends of the Earth, last night called for VAT on fuel to be put up again and for the income to be used in insulation programmes. Wind power, solar power and small-scale hydro-electric plants would all help, he added.

The former environment secretary, John Gummer, at a climate conference in the United States, said Britain could take a lead. Policy initiatives could include making electrical goods more eco-friendly and actively discouraging the use of green field sites for building. "We don't want saving the environment to become a kind of excuse for taxation," he said.

Matthew Taylor, the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, said the time had come for action: "We know what the problem is. Now Tony Blair needs to go further."

Sir Crispin Tickell, convenor of the government panel on sustainable development, backed the Prime Minister. Forest fires and smog in Indonesia might make people think, he said. "People will see that if you totally ignore the environment and complex eco-systems .... suddenly you can't breathe."

Whether or not Mr Blair is serious, he will not be the first British Prime Minister to take such a stand. Mrs Thatcher was converted to the cause of tackling global warming as long ago as 1988, and a series of "green" taxes were imposed under the Conservatives.