Dealing With Reality  

The Observer reports that the US may finally be giving in and accepting the need to do something about climate change. Of course, this isn't because they have done an about-face and started believing climate scientists rather than persecuting them - but because the need to deal with the looming energy crisis has become too obvious for even the Bush administration to ignore.

A historic deal on climate change which would see the US sign up to cut greenhouse gas emissions was last night emerging after a day of frantic negotiations ahead of the G8 summit. The draft text hammered out by officials meeting in London is expected to pledge the world's richest countries to wean themselves off fossil fuels - not just to save the planet, but to prevent a worldwide energy crisis.

An action plan to be unveiled at the Gleneagles summit this week will centre on a package to clean up land and air transport, and provide green technology to developing countries through a deal brokered by the World Bank. The first hope of a breakthrough came yesterday as the White House finally conceded that human activity was at least the partial cause of global warming.

But with Tony Blair still pushing for more concrete action to clean up the planet, the final text is expected to gloss over differences between the US and other countries over the science of global warming by saying the changes are also necessary to prevent an energy crisis. With oil prices soaring to $60 a barrel and fossil fuel supplies finite, George Bush is understood to have been swayed by fears over energy security.

'We were never going to get the Americans to accept everything on the science front or sign up to Kyoto: that was clear. But what they do accept is that there is climate change and that for reasons of energy security and just reducing pollution, they favour measures that reduce our dependence on carbon-based fuels,' said a Whitehall source. 'The motivation might be different but the net results and the impact are the same.'