In Britain, Tony Blair’s government has launched a new initiative to fight global warming. The British government issued a major report on Monday that said global warming would have a cataclysmic effect on the global economy.

• British Prime Minister Tony Blair: “The scientific evidence of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions is overwhelming. It is not in doubt that if the science is right the consequences for our planet are literally disastrous and this disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime.”

British Chancellor Gordon Brown outlined the government’s plan of action

• Gordon Brown: “Our proposal is to provide a new European wide emissions target of 30 percent by 2020 and at least 60 percent by 2050 providing greater long term certainty for business as we extend the framework for four more decades. Our proposal is also to expand it to cover more sectors and more emissions, to take it beyond Carbon Dioxide to other greenhouse gasses and then to extend it from Europe across the world.”

Tony Blair said the consequences of inaction are literally disastrous for the planet but he said other nations must step up.

• Tony Blair: “We have got to ensure that there is a framework that America will come into and China and India because the reality of this is unless you get those three actors in this framework it isn’t going to succeed.”

Meanwhile a new report from the United Nations has found that the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from the industrialized world is growing again, despite the Kyoto Protocol.