The British government has hired former US vice president Al Gore as a lobbyist to convince the American public that action must be taken urgently to combat the "disastrous" threat of global warming.
The unusual appointment was announced yesterday following the publication in London of a major review by the government's chief economist warning of the dire consequences of failing to deal with climate change.
Sir Nicholas Stern's review starkly warned that the world was entering "dangerous territory" unless urgent action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent the rise in global temperatures.
British prime minister Tony Blair described it as the most important report on the future to be published by the government during his term of office; if its findings were not heeded, the result would be "disastrous".
Scientific evidence was "overwhelming", he said. "This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime. Unless we act now . . . these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible."
The review was published just a week before the latest round of UN talks on climate change starts in Nairobi, Kenya and on the same day that the UN secretariat in Bonn released data showing an upward trend in emissions between 2000 and 2004.
The weighty review provides ammunition for Mr Blair's drive to persuade the US, as well as fast-growing developing countries such as China and India, to sign up to a new global framework to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Chancellor Gordon Brown pledged that Britain would lead a global effort to tackle climate change. Mr Gore - whose film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, has been drawing large audiences - worldwide, will be part of this.
The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change in 2003, arguing that it would damage the US economy. But Sir Nicholas warned that failing to tackle it will hit the global economy far harder than taking action.
As his review says, climate change risks raising average temperatures by more than 5 degrees Celsius. "This rise would be very dangerous indeed; it is equivalent to the change in average temperatures from the last Ice Age to today."
No country would escape. "The poorest countries and populations will suffer earliest and most, even though they have contributed least to the causes of climate change". But large coastal cities such as London, New York and Tokyo are also threatened.
"Hundreds of millions of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world warms," the review says.
Sir Nicholas warns that the cost of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5 per cent and possibly as much as 20 per cent of global GDP each year.
British environment secretary David Miliband confirmed that a Climate Change Bill was being drafted to enshrine in law the British government's long-term target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent between now and 2050. A range of "green taxes" is also being considered, including a new tax on aviation fuel as well as higher levies on the most polluting cars, such as SUVs (sports utility vehicles) in an effort to change people's personal behaviour.
Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne said the review would have "a very significant impact in moving economic and business thinking towards the view that the sooner we tackle the problem the better".
Green Party finance spokesman Dan Boyle TD said the review confirmed his party's view that the Government needed to take a radically different approach "to prevent ourselves from sleepwalking into an uncertain future".
But Dr Richard Tol, senior research officer at the ESRI, said the report's assumption that people would "never get used to higher temperatures, changed rainfall patterns, or higher sea levels" was a "rather dim view of human ingenuity".
