Only hurricane will wake Brown to climate - expert

A HURRICANE Katrina-style disaster will have to hit Britain before Chancellor Gordon Brown takes climate change seriously, a leading environmental scientist said yesterday.

Professor Peter Smith, of Nottingham University, condemned the government's recent energy review, saying it "totally fails" to realise the need for urgent action.

He said new ways of producing energy must be designed within five years if the world is to avoid producing a runaway temperature rise as natural stores of carbon break up and ice-caps melt on a large scale.

Prof Smith also criticised "rhetoric" from Conservative leader David Cameron, as he attacked Mr Brown for resisting investment in tidal energy schemes and failing to promote micro-renewables such as mini-windturbines for people's homes.

"Politicians, to be fair to them, would like to do things, but they hit that brick wall called the Treasury. There is not the will, in my view, in the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to invest in technologies to make big inroads into our use of fossil fuel."

He suggested only something like "a two-metre rise in the Thames so the House of Commons is underwater", would prompt politicians to take the situation seriously.