HISTORIC PRESS RELEASE : Prime Minister Gordon Brown tells young people climate deal is achievable [November 2009]

The press release issued by 10 Downing Street on 4 December 2009.

The Prime Minister has told a group of young people that a deal at Copenhagen to avert catastrophic climate change is achievable.

Gordon Brown joined Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband and Baroness Glenys Kinnock in a discussion with an audience of 16 to 25 year-olds on climate change this morning.  A member of the UK Youth Climate Change Coalition facilitated the event.

The question time debate comes just days before the world meets at the United Nations conference in a bid to agree a new international agreement to tackle climate change.

The PM said the world is half way to agreeing an international climate deal, but a five billion-tonne gap must be closed at Copenhagen.

“Today the world is on a path to emissions of 54 billion tonnes by 2020. So we need to take out 10 billion tonnes through this agreement. So far, unilateral action by countries around the world to reduce their emissions is already projected to take five billion tonnes out of the atmosphere. So we are half way there. Now at Copenhagen we must achieve the other half.”

Mr Brown said the European Union has put forward an ambitious offer and now everybody else needs to be ambitious too.