If Tony Blair is to leave his mark on history, it must be as a European and world statesman. Twice he has missed crucial opportunities to take Britain into the heart of Europe and to do so in a way which constructively reshapes the Atlantic partnership and the world.
When he came to power he missed the chance to take Britain into the euro, creating a better balance in the global monetary system. Iraq offered the chance to forge a genuine European foreign and security policy through a shared strategic purpose forged in the fire of decisive events. With the scales of debate in Washington delicately poised, there was a historic opportunity for a united Europe to restrain a rashly unilateral America and reinforce instead the global rule of law through UN inspection, making both America and Europe far more secure than they are today.
Yet if Blair survives the current tragedies, he has a third chance to leave his mark on history, as a European and world statesman, this time through the issue which he himself regards as the largest challenge facing humankind: climate change.
Man-made climate change is, in the words of the government's chief scientific adviser, a greater threat than terrorism. And the scientists' fears, tentative at first, are now confirmed by an accelerating pattern of events: rising average temperatures, melting Arctic, Greenland and mountain ice, erratic weather, hurricanes and floods. Scientists agree that global emissions need to be cut by some 60-80 per cent during this century to stabilise world temperatures within a safe 2-degree average increase. If emissions continue to expand, temperatures could rise by an average of 6 degrees or more, raising sea levels, threatening a runaway chain reaction and the survival of many species, including our own. A gulf yawns between the necessity of collective global action and the failure of political response.
It is here that the prime minister's impressive talents could find a worthy cause if his apparent understanding of the global climate challenge could be applied to the actions of his own government and to statesmanship in Europe and the world. But he will need courage and a willingness to initiate action without American support.
During 2005, Britain will take up the presidency of the G8 group of industrial nations, and in July of the EU. The prime minister's hopes of using the G8 presidency to persuade the new Bush administration to come back into the fold and join the post-Kyoto phase of multilateral commitment have met brusque rejection. The White House is more scornful than ever of wimpish European climatologists. So leadership must now come from Europe and the developing world.
The British presidency of the EU in the second half of 2005 will be crucial. EU leadership was key to the initial Kyoto agreement and remains essential to its implementation. Backed by much common thinking between Britain, France and Germany, the British presidency will provide the opportunity to shape a common European position for the larger negotiations, due to begin at the end of 2005, on the next stage of global cuts, starting not later than 2012. This must address the core long-term issues: commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions down to a responsibly safe level, and a form of equity which can mobilise developing countries, the world's majority.
These needs are met by "contraction and convergence," the approach developed by the Global Commons Institute and backed by a large number of environmental bodies throughout the world. It works like this: participating states would fix a long-term target for total global greenhouse gas emission, and the necessary cuts in emissions required to meet it (contraction). They would then adopt the principle of according every world citizen an equal entitlement to emit greenhouse gases by a certain date - perhaps somewhere between 2030 and 2050 - so that a country's emission limits would, by then, be determined by its population. In the transition period, a global market in emissions would transfer resources to poor countries that have surplus emission allowances and force rich countries to drive down their emissions by applying the technologies of the post-carbon age (convergence).
The necessary momentum will not be achieved by waiting for the slowest. Collaboration within the UN framework convention on climate change by the vanguard group must establish effective institutions which monitor and ensure implementation of the system, manage the emissions market, settle disputes, provide accountability and apply the rule of law.
Such action could help mobilise America to act in its true interests and take up its rightful share of leadership. US states with binding emission reduction programmes could associate with the climate community's emissions market even though the federal government opts out at present.
As with trade, united European action will lead America back to partnership. But for now, the path of promise for the prime minister is to initiate the dialogue necessary to prepare for this "new covenant between nations" (his phrase). Victory in the coming election gives him his last chance to put Britain at the centre of Europe's foreign policy and the world's shared governance.
