Blair "Indistinguishable" From Bush On Climate Change - WWF

[hatrack]

A leading environmental charity has condemned Tony Blair's position on climate change as "indistinguishable" from that of George W Bush, the US president. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) accused the Prime Minister of undermining international efforts to tackle climate change, despite making the issue one of the key themes of Britain's presidency of the G8 group of industrialised nations.

Andrew Lee, WWF campaigns director, said Mr Blair was damaging efforts to deal with the issue by emphasising that targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions must not be at the expense of economic growth. "This is exactly the language we hear from George Bush," Mr Lee told the BBC. "Our question is: is he a man of substance and principle on these environmental commitments or is this just nice talk?"

Earlier this month, Mr Blair said "the blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge". Professor Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser, dismissed WWF's criticisms as "grossly unfair" and defended Mr Blair's comments.

"The message needs to be got across that this isn't at the expense of growing economies," he said. "I don't think that any country is going to manage a process where the suspicion is that they will need to reduce their GDP growth."

EDIT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/14/uclimate.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/11/14/ixportaltop.html

[phantom power]

1. Is Blair distinguishable from Bush in *any* way?

Aside from the fact that he's better educated and more articulate? Which just makes his many policy similarities to Bush all the more inexcusable.