There is renewed commitment in the United States and China to tackle the problem of climate change, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview with China Daily on Thursday after meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and other government and business leaders in Beijing this week.

"The level of determination is bigger than it's ever been before," he said. "And I really believe this time that China and America need not be in collision on this issue. They can cooperate to find a common solution."

China and the US together account for roughly 40 percent of annual global carbon emissions, and the two countries are trying to hammer out the outlines of a climate change agreement before a major international summit on the issue in Copenhagen at the end of this year.

"I think the desire is there to reach an agreement at Copenhagen in a way it wasn't there 12 years ago at Kyoto," Blair said, referring to a climate change treaty signed in Kyoto, Japan which the US did not ratify.

Still, it will not be easy, the former Prime Minister acknowledged. Political leaders "have challenges on every side in relation to this," he said. "The Chinese leadership of course has got to balance commitment to action on climate change with economic growth. These are not easy questions."

Indeed, China and the US disagree about what the nature of that agreement should be. China argues that as a developing country with a lower per capita emission rate than the United States, it should also have greater leeway to focus on development. But Washington maintains that any agreement is meaningless without a major commitment to reduce emissions from Beijing.

Blair, however, argued that this question can be at least partially sidestepped by focusing on the development of green technology. "What we've got to do is develop the science and technology that allows us to consume differently," he said. "It's not how do we stop consuming."

And the global economic crisis, he says, represents an opportunity to do just that.

"It is a crisis, but it's also an opportunity to restructure our economies. So let us invest in clean technology for the future," he said. 

(China Daily August 20, 2009)