Letters From A Tory

Dear Al Gore,

Opinion of your work on climate change seems to split people into one of two camps - those who think you are a saint, and those who think you are a fraud.  I would not question the passion that you have for introducing measures that will protect the environment over the coming years and decades, but I fear your effort may be wasted.

The reality is that only money (more specifically the threat of losing money) that will change a country’s attitude to climate change.  According to the newspapers today, there was a verbal slanging match between EU and US officials about America’s refusal to sign up to binding targets on reducing CO2 emissions at the Bali conference.  But regardless of much respect people have for your commitment to climate change, even you cannot force America to sign up to anything that it doesn’t want to.  You raised the issue of George Bush leaving office shortly but I cannot believe that the next President of the United States will suddenly fall over backwards to save the environment, such is the economic pressure on the US economy.

In short, nothing less than serious penalties on international trade will ever make a country like America or China change their ways - and it is only the EU that could ever get close to introducing such measures.  As a trading block, the EU is effectively the biggest economy in the world.  It therefore comes down to the EU to make things happen on climate change rather than talking-shop conferences.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory