E3G

BBC Radio 4: G8 Summit Analysis

By Chris Littlecott

[7.22] ES: Do you think that’s useful, John Ashton, with your sort of former diplomatic hat on, to have it [climate change] recognised on the agenda like this, presumably it means it’s something you can go back to?

JA: Clearly more dialogue is better than less dialogue but what really matters is the content of the dialogue.

I think one very important opportunity we now have in the UK is the presidency of the European Union where there is a big debate going on about the future of the European budget and how to modernise that and make it more relevant to today’s problems.

The obvious opportunity is to say: “Look, what matters today is climate security, we need to re-balance from food security to climate security, move public investment from farm subsidies into climate technologies”.

ES: But that obviously doesn’t help with the American element…

JA: Well, I think it does actually. Because I think what that would do is to start growing a market for the next generation of energy and transport technologies. And that would create business pressures that in fact I suspect would be far more likely to start shifting views in the American administration than the kind of intergovernmental conversations that we have been talking about today.

ES: John Ashton, Brian Hoskins thanks both very much indeed.