Brown Urges Progress on Climate Deal

By SELINA WILLIAMS
LONDON -- U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the Major Economies Forum Monday to work together and compromise to help reach agreement at U.N.-led climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
"If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: Once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late," Mr. Brown said, according to prepared remarks.
He also told representatives of leaders of the world's 17 biggest polluters at a U.K.-hosted meeting that a high-carbon path of economic growth is not sustainable in the long-term.
"Such growth would be unsustainable, and soon overwhelmed by its inevitable consequences: greater energy insecurity, greater pollution and ill-health and--as a result of climate-induced migration and poverty in the poorest countries--almost inevitably, greater conflict," Mr. Brown said.
A low-carbon future means cooperation over technology development and assistance, providing finance for adaptation and a global carbon market that creates investment flows to developing countries, he added.
"This is the moment. Now is the time. For the planet there is no plan B," Mr. Brown said, according to prepared remarks.
Representatives of leaders from the 17 countries in the MEF are meeting to try to narrow disagreement on core issues of a climate deal such as finance, governance, technology transfer, mitigation and forestry.
The MEF meetings are not an official part of the U.N. negotiations, but are intended to support the talks. At the last MEF meeting in L'Aquila, Italy in July, leaders from countries including the U.S., China and the European Union, moved the process forward when they recognized the need to limit the increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius.
However, there are fears that there isn't enough time remaining until the Copenhagen negotiations to find agreement on the key issues.
Countries are still haggling over how much finance developed countries will give developing nations to help pay for mitigation and adaptation, and key polluters the U.S. and China have yet to offer a concrete number for domestic emissions cuts.
Write to Selina Williams at selina.williams@dowjones.com