Draft G8 deal on climate change 'lets US off hook'

As Tony Blair launches a diplomatic offensive today to win support for Britain's aims on Africa and global warming during its G8 presidency, an official draft communiqu reveals how limited any agreement on the latter is likely to be.

Mr Blair wants the leaders of the world's richest nations to agree man-made pollutants are causing the Earth's temperature to rise - something the United States, under pressure from the fossil fuel lobby, is reluctant to accept.

But the document, written by British government officials after negotiations with the US and other G8 members, states only that mankind is "contributing" to global warming. It makes no reference to the US's refusal to sign up to the Kyoto agreement on reducing carbon emissions and fails to propose any targets for cutting pollution after the agreement runs out in 2012.

It focuses instead on the need to "accelerate" the development of clean energy technologies, with an emphasis on promoting work already under way.

Environmentalists yesterday branded the draft agreement a "damp squib" and said it showed the US had already blocked any meaningful progress.

Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser, last year described climate change as a bigger threat to the human race than terrorism.

Greenpeace said: "This is an anodyne document which aims squarely at the lowest common denominator, that being the Bush administration. In terms of tackling climate change, what Blair calls the gravest threat we face, it's stunningly unambitious - truly a damp squib.

"They say that mankind is contributing to the problem. That is just not enough; we're doing more than just contributing to it. This lets America off the hook."

Mr Blair is due to set off for Rome today to meet Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, in the first round of a diplomatic offensive that will also take him to Moscow and Washington. Some have questioned whether Mr Blair, distracted by a month-long general election campaign, has left himself enough time to broker a meaningful G8 accord when its leaders meet at Gleneagles Hotel, in Perthshire, in July.

More than 50 individual commitments are contained in the draft protocol, including a prize fund to encourage "green" new technology research, "ambitious" targets for the sale of low-carbon vehicles and the creation of a global database of energy research findings.

It also endorses the controversial "paying to pollute" trading, which allows the big polluting countries to buy greenhouse gas emission quotas from "clean" nations.

Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth, said: "This document appears more like a face-saving exercise than a plan of action to save the world's climate.

"It is clear that this document has been massively influenced by the US who have resisted all attempts to tackle climate change in any meaningful way."

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "We have set an ambitious agenda for the G8 summit and we have set out what we want to see.

"The Prime Minister is going to be meeting Berlusconi tomorrow and will be in contact with all the G8 leaders about the international community doing more. We will see further efforts in the run-up to Gleneagles."