Tony Blair took some time off from yachting in New Zealand to say that what the world needs is a “technological revolution similar to the internet” in order to slow global warming.
What I suspect Mr. Blair doesn’t know is that the internet didn’t just pop up overnight. The first TCP/IP network (arguably the start of the internet as we know it) was born in 1983 but this was building on technology that had been developing since the 70s which in turn had been born out of the US DoD’s DARPA which was started in 1958. So if he means similar in timescale I don’t think it’ll help with hitting the emissions targets for 2010.
The comment almost sounds like an attempt to shift blame from policy making politicians and the world leaders that signed up for the Kyoto protocol, which Mr. Blair wishes to replace with “an international framework”, to scientists and technologists who obviously aren’t paying enough attention to the climate but to the internet instead.
The myth of the global warming technology cureall is not a new one. George W. Bush is also keen to wait for a technology based environment fix and uses the idea of biodiesel made from soybeans, although America’s fuel independence and helping out farmers probably rank higher than the sorting out the environment in his list of motives.
Essentially I think what Mr. Blair is saying is that the Kyoto Protocol isn’t working because…
- The UK is already heading over its target.
- America isn’t signed up (some American states are setting their own limits)
- China & India are expanding (both accepted the Kyoto Protocol in August 2002)
and as such should be replaced by his “international framework” but this is precisely what Kyoto set out to be, it even says so in its full title “Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” so I have to wonder how Mr. Blair’s will differ and why it will be any more succesful, especially if it takes Mr Blair’s attitude that a technological quickfix is just around the corner.
Resources
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4854886.stm
- http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/59005.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
- http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050516.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Greenhouse_Gas_Initiative
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol