Tony Blair’s script for his last few months in office is becoming clearer. He is planning to use the G8 summit in July as a last hurrah. In the ideal world, he will leave office as a hero - having persuaded the United States to sign up to a new accord on global warming.

A global-warming deal would be sweet for Blair for a number of reasons. First, it would win him back credit with all the lefties who have despised him ever since the Iraq war. Second, it would demonstrate that he does indeed have clout with the United States. All the critics who have derided Blair as a deluded poodle, who has got nothing for his fealty to George Bush, would have to eat their words. Tony has delivered the Americans and saved the planet. Thank you and goodnight.

Blair is obviously too cautious to put it quite like that. But he is definitely sounding hopeful. In an interview this week, he insisted that there has been a "change of mood on climate change" in the United States.

There is some evidence for this. There are numerous bills on climate change pending before Congress. And even the Bush administration is going on the offensive, to persuade the world that it does take the issue seriously.

Just last week Kurt Volker, the State Department’s number two man on Europe, gave a speech in Berlin on climate change. Volker’s frustration was clear. As he put it - "There is a deeply held view among many in Europe that the U.S doesn’t get it. That we don’t care about climate change, that we are doing nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that Europe…is doing a far better job." This view Volker boldly declared was "wrong on every point".

The Bush administration, according to Volker, cares deeply about climate change; accepts that "human activity contributes to global warming"; is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and has spent $29 billion on the problem over the last five years. What is more, American emissions are growing more slowly than European emissions.All this must sound pretty good, heard from 10 Downing Street. But if you dig a little deeper, then the chances of a big new "global warming" deal by July look pretty thin.

I spoke to Volker last week, shortly after his Berlin speech. I was left in no doubt that he takes global warming seriously, and that he thinks the US has nothing to apologise for. But it also seems pretty clear to me that the Bush administration is still very dubious about the sort of post-Kyoto deal that Tony Blair has in mind.

Specifically, Volker poured cold water over the idea of a global "cap-and-trade" scheme for carbon emissions. He said that any such deal that does not include China and India would not be worth having. But he then added - "We’re sceptical if global cap-and-trade really would work." Could you believe the numbers from developing countries, he asked? And how would any such agreement be policed?

Volker went on to say that he was worried that initial international discussions on a successor to Kyoto was pursuing the same old approach - which, he predicted, would be extremely divisive. It seems pretty clear to me that the Bush administration is far more interested in pursuing technological answers to global warming than a global cap-and-trade agreement. As Volker put it, global warming is "not a moral problem, it’s an engineering problem."

Mr Blair may dream of delivering a big new climate change deal, just before stepping down from office. But I suspect that the Bush administration is going to disappoint him one last time.

February 19th, 2007 in UK politics | Permalink