Remarks by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Davos, 30 January 2009.
Good evening. It is an honour to be here with all of you tonight - and let me first thank the World Economic Forum for providing what is as ever an excellent platform for our discussions. There are many people here tonight who have made a real difference not only to our understanding of climate change but to our ability to fight it - and I would like in particular to pay tribute to the visionary and determined leadership of Al Gore, Nick Stern and Yvo de Boer, as well as the Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Climate Change.
This year will culminate in a United Nations conference in Copenhagen that will show the world whether we have truly understood the threat we face, and whether as leaders - not just of governments, but of businesses and civil society - we have the political will and common purpose to address it.
We find ourselves today in difficult and sober circumstances. And in these testing economic times, some say the pledges we have made on climate change will be too hard, too costly, too demanding.
I disagree. For, as Nick Stern and Al Gore have warned us, the costs of unchecked climate change are far, far higher than the costs of combating it. If we do not reduce our emissions from their present path - by at least half, globally, by 2050, with a peak in 2020 - we will bring upon ourselves a human and economic catastrophe that will make today’s crisis look small. And it will be the poorest and the most vulnerable who will suffer first and greatest.
So we cannot afford to relegate climate change to the international pending tray because of our current economic difficulties. Instead, we must use the imperative of building a low carbon economy as a route to creating jobs and growth, the path that will see us through the current downturn.
And already, together, we have begun the long walk down that road. In the European Union’s economic recovery plan, in President Obama’s green jobs package, in the stimulus packages of China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, France, Germany, Spain and Denmark, and in my own government’s forthcoming green industrial strategy, the contours of a resilient low carbon recovery are becoming clear:
- a major investment in energy efficiency to cut business and consumer costs and free up resources for productive spending and investment;
- a fundamental shift of the structure of our energy economies towards renewables and nuclear power — and shortly, I am convinced, carbon capture and storage;
- a re-engineering of electricity grids alongside digital grids to enable dynamic demand and supply from diverse sources - the smart grids of the future;
- the accelerated commercialisation of low carbon cars - particularly plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles - and their charging infrastructure;
- boosting investment in research and development of new energy technologies;
- and ensuring, through apprenticeships and science and engineering graduate training programmes, that these new sectors have the skilled workforces they need.
And underpinning all these measures is a common principle: the need to lay down now the infrastructure and the hardware to support a low carbon recovery and the green economy of the future.
Some of this will happen through public spending, some through tax incentives, some through regulated and incentivised private sector investment. But all will meet our triple bottom line:
- creating jobs and stimulating the economy over the short and medium term;
- improving our energy security by reducing overdependence on oil and traditional fossil fuels;
- and cutting our greenhouse emissions.
And we know that the more we can coordinate these measures internationally, the more confidence and certainty we will build in these industries and the more investment we will be able to bring forward.
Globally, it is estimated that environmental industries - renewable and nuclear energy, waste management, pollution control, energy efficient products and so on - are worth $4 trillion and are forecast to grow by 45 per cent over the next eight years.
So I believe that, through these measures, we can engineer a technological transformation that will be one of this century’s key drivers of economic growth. In this respect I very much welcome the report issued here by the world economic forum on how we can scale up this investment.
And as the report makes clear, these changes cannot be confined to the developed world. We will not avoid the perils of climate change unless emerging economies too make significant reductions in their ‘business as usual’ emissions and unless they too are part of the transition to a low carbon economy. That will require them to leapfrog a generation of technology and move straight to a low carbon future - with high efficiency factories, low carbon cars and public transport, and renewables such as solar, biomass and wind perhaps eliminating the need for centralised electricity grids in rural areas altogether — and Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs have already shown great creativity and innovation in this regard.
So we must forge a new partnership with the developing world to drive this forward. Over the last year Britain, the US, Japan, France, Germany and now seven other donor nations have helped to create and to finance a new $6 billion dollar suite of climate investment funds at the world bank, in cooperation with the other multilateral development banks. And as the first investments emerge from these new funds I believe we will see a transformation in energy investment beginning to occur. Mexico among others is leading the way and I pay special tribute to President Calderon’s leadership in this field.
President Zoellick has now proposed a new $100 billion dollar stimulus package for the developing world using bank capital. I would hope and expect that up to $10 billion dollars of this will go on a low carbon stimulus, to help ensure that the low carbon recovery is truly global - while we must also make sure that the remainder of the lending avoids a dangerous locking-in of high carbon infrastructure.
But to do this most effectively governments need to work together with the private sector. It is business that will make the vast bulk of low carbon investment and whose technologies and innovation will drive the transition — so we need business to formulate with us the economic and policy conditions that will incentivise their investment and that will bring the low carbon economy into being.
And that is what Copenhagen must provide — for the post-2012 agreement we seek is not an end in itself. It is a means to building the global low carbon economy that will bring about a safer and sustainable world.
So today, alongside the World Economic Forum, I want to call for a new business-led mission in support of an ambitious climate agreement in Copenhagen, focused on the policies that will lead to business investment in a low carbon recovery.
What we propose is a task force of businesses, economists and thought leaders to help us design an effective agreement
- that will build the global carbon market;
- that will put in place the international product and technology standards to raise global energy efficiency;
- that will drive investment in renewables, nuclear power, and carbon capture and storage;
- that will stimulate research and development in new technologies;
- and that will help ensure that low carbon technologies and investment are available in the developing as well as the developed world.
I would like this task force to report in time for the London G20 summit in April, with practical recommendations for a low carbon recovery. And I would like to see over the full course of this year this mission gather the support of business and economists for an ambitious and effective global agreement in Copenhagen.
Britain stands ready to support such an initiative — something I know many of you have been discussing here with the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband - and I look forward to hearing the outcomes of those discussions.
I think it was Victor Hugo who said that great perils bring alive the fraternity of strangers. But in today’s interconnected world there can be no strangers. Only through global fraternity - through the collective action of nations and their societies across the world - can we address this extraordinary challenge. It is a challenge which reaches across generations, but it is to our generation that it falls to meet it. Working apart we will surely fail. But working together we can succeed, and I have no doubt that we will.
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