"This is a make or break time for our climate and future", UK Climate and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said today as the UK Government for the first time ever set out its detailed manifesto ahead of global climate talks.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown today went further than any other world leader with a speech in London aimed at breaking through the most contentious area of the talks: how the world pays for avoiding dangerous climate change. With just 163 days left before crucial climate negotiations take place in the Danish capital of Copenhagen, the Government today sets out for the first time why an international climate change deal is vital for the world and what a deal must contain. But is also outlines why success is vital for Britain, as well as explaining what Britons can do now to slash their carbon footprints.

Publishing 'The Road to Copenhagen', a manifesto for a global climate deal, Ed Miliband said:

"This is make or break time for our climate and our future. With less than six months to go before crunch negotiations in Copenhagen, it's clear that there is no 'plan B'.

"The world's got no option but to work together to get a global climate deal that's ambitious, effective and fair.

"For people in Britain, getting a global deal now will mean reducing the risk devastating future climate impacts and the extra costs that would bring. But it will also open to door to green jobs, a cleaner environment and a healthier future for us and our kids."

As part of the Government's efforts to unblock the climate deal, Prime Minister Gordon Brown set out proposals around how the world puts in place the finance that's needed to tackle climate change.

Prime Minister Brown told ambassadors, green groups and business organisations gathered in London:

"An ambitious agreement in Copenhagen is certainly achievable. And yet it remains far from certain. We cannot allow this to drift - when every year of delay retards investment, locks us into a higher emissions pathway, worsens the impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable, and increases the costs of eventual reduction.

"Copenhagen is twenty-three weeks away. When historians look back on this critical moment, let them say, not that we were the generation that failed our children; but that we had the courage, and the will, to succeed."

In his speech the PM sets out how developed and developing countries should work together to generate around $100 billion per year by 2020 to help developing countries address climate change - helping pay for plans to reduce emissions, avoid deforestation, and adaptation. He also proposes the mechanisms for how that financing should be raised and who should pay, and how it should be delivered. A key part of the speech includes a push for climate financing to be additional to existing overseas aid.

Read the Prime Minister's entire Roadmap to Copenhagen speech.

As part of the countdown to Copenhagen, the UK Government today:

• publishes the 'Road to Copenhagen' document setting out why a deal is so important and, for the first time, the details of what kind of deal the UK Government is pushing for. It will also outline what the UK is doing domestically.
• launches - www.actoncopenhagen.gov.uk - the official UK government website that presents the position on climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, 2009. It will act as the domestic and international hub for information and communications in the lead up to Copenhagen.

Today's announcement follows the UK Climate Projections published last week, that showed that by the 2080s temperatures could, under a high emissions scenario, be up to 12 degrees C warmer on the hottest summer days and and sea levels could rise by 36 cm.

Read about how the UK is working with US states to combat climate change. 

 

Back to newsroom

Back to top