Bush Calls for Action By Biggest Greenhouse Emitters

George Bush today called on the world's biggest polluters to set goals on curbing greenhouse gases, in the US president's clearest admission yet of the threat posed by climate change.

The US would also cut tariff barriers to sharing environmental technology, Mr Bush said. The president was speaking in Washington ahead of next week's G8 summit in Germany, where climate change will be a major issue.

The US strategy calls for a consensus on long-term goals for reducing the greenhouse gases that lie behind global warming, but not before the end of 2008, the White House said.

Mr Bush said he would ask for the first in a series of meetings to begin in Autumn, bringing together major emitters of greenhouse gases, including the US, China, India and major European countries. The G8 group of leading industrialized countries accounts for well over 70% of the world's emissions.

"The United States will work with other nations to establish a new framework for greenhouse gas emissions for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012," the president said.

"So my proposal is this: By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases."

Tony Blair immediately hailed Mr Bush's announcement as "a huge step forward".

Mr Blair, speaking on a visit to South Africa, told Sky News: "This is what we have been working for all the way through, because ... we need a deal in which America as well as China and India ... are involved for the first time - and a deal that's about cutting these dangerous emissions. Obviously it's a big step forward."

Mr Blair, who has made climate change one of his signature issues, has been pressing Mr Bush to adopt a more proactive approach.

In a speech at the University of South Africa in Johannesburg, Mr Blair said there was a "real chance" that the G8 and the G5 (China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil) could agree a post-Kyoto framework.

"The coming year has to be a turning point," he said.

In answering questions later, the prime minister said China would overtake America on emissions within 20 years. "If we shut down the whole of Britain [and] emitted nothing, within two years the growths of China's emissions would make up the difference. They are building a coal-fired power station every four days. They are to build I think around 70 major airports."

He added: "One thing the wealthy world can't say is 'you can't grow'. But on the other hand one thing that I think is really absurd, if we want to tackle climate change, is if the world's largest emitters are not part of the deal."

Mr Blair pointed to governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives in California and said: "There is real change coming around, even in the United States of America. Next week I think could be very important; very significant."

Environmentalists were less enthusiastic than Mr Blair about the Bush initiative.

Tony Juniper, the head of Friends of the Earth, said: "This is a deliberate and carefully crafted attempt to derail any prospect of a climate change agreement (at the G8 summit) in Germany next week. [Mr Bush] is trying to destroy the prospect of that getting anywhere by announcing his own parallel process with very vaguely expressed objectives ... Basically we should see this as a delaying tactic to keep the climate change issue off his back in terms of any real decisions until he leaves office (in early 2009)."