Chirac conference:President Jacques Chirac convened his "Citizens of the Earth Conference for Global Ecological Governance" at the Élysée Palace yesterday, immediately after the UN report on climate change was published.
Addressing an audience of scientists, politicians and officials, Mr Chirac reiterated forcefully French proposals to create a United Nations Environment Organisation and impose a carbon tax on the world's biggest producers of greenhouse emissions - namely the United States.
French officials said Mr Chirac had the support of the EU for both measures, but European sources said some member states were reluctant.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, boasted of Europe's good behaviour in producing only 14 per cent of the world's greenhouse emissions, to be reduced to 8 per cent by 2030.
When the European Union celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding in Berlin next month, Mr Barroso wants the declaration to define sustainable development and the battle against climate change as "great missions of the Europe of tomorrow".
A recent report by Sir Nicholas Stern, the adviser to the British government, estimated the cost of fighting climate change at 1 per cent of the world's GDP; far less than the 5 per cent of GDP that natural disasters will inflict if global warming goes unchecked. At the Élysée yesterday, Sir Nicholas urged the conference to set a world price for carbon emissions, to be collected through taxes or permits.
After publication of the UN report, it was simply "untenable" to maintain that the scientists had got it wrong, Sir Nicholas said. The belief that the human race could adapt to climate change was "irresponsible", and the après moi le déluge attitude of saying the consequences were still a long way away was immoral.
"As the guardian of an ancient spiritual tradition, we commit ourselves to praying for the planet," said Bartholomew I, the Patriarch of Constantinople. To this end, he has invited world religious leaders to a symposium in the arctic next summer.
For one eerie moment, nature burst into the elegant salon furnished with red velvet, gold leaf and crystal chandeliers. Up to 50 per cent of animal species could disappear over the next century. Describing herself as the "representative of the animal kingdom", Dr Jane Goodall, the primate scientist who spent years in the African forest, regaled the audience with the call of a Tanzanian chimpanzee saying "hello". The low "woo-woo-woo" sound rose to a scream, sounding more like a cry of distress than a greeting.
We are not "borrowing the future from our children", as the Patriarch said, Dr Goodall continued. "We have stolen the future from our children. As the grandmother of three, I feel deep shame, anger and desperation." Ever since he convinced the former US president Bill Clinton to enter into negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol (which the Bush administration later abandoned), the environment has been a recurring theme of Mr Chirac's presidency.
Mr Chirac this week reiterated calls for a carbon tax on imports from countries that don't sign up to Kyoto. "A carbon tax is inevitable," he said, adding that the EU would support him. Since the US is the world's biggest polluter, and the EU is the first destination for its exports, the US would lose most.
But it is far from certain that Mr Chirac, who will leave office in three months, will obtain EU agreement for the tax. Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, thought it might be a good idea.
"We need to think of very radical measures because we're already out of time," she said. "I would be prepared to contemplate any significant measures for change, and taxation is a great instrument. It really does affect behaviour."
Although the US does not accept Kyoto, Environment Minister Dick Roche thought it might be preferable "to build on the existing carbon-trading system" established by the protocol.
"Countries like the US, Brazil, China and India really have to be brought into this, and they're not going to be engaged by people hectoring them from the sidelines," he said. "The subtlety of (the conference) today is that they realise there's a world opinion they can't avoid."
Some 18 international organisations and 500 treaties currently deal with the environment. Mr Chirac wants to bring all of them together under one UN agency, but this is opposed by the Bush administration.
"We must build world environmental governance," Mr Chirac said. "In this area as in others, unilateralism leads nowhere... The UN Environment Organisation will act as the world's ecological conscience."
Mrs Robinson, Mr Roche and high-ranking French officials said public opinion on the environment in the US has shifted radically and is now in tune with Europe. "The next US president will follow this trend - that's obvious, said Hubert Védrine, the former foreign minister and one of the conference organisers.