KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark's recent talk about the possibility of a carbon-neutral New Zealand is a "beacon", Britain's senior climate change envoy John Ashton says.
"We all have to go in that direction," he said after talks at the Beehive yesterday.
Carbon neutrality means making no net increase to the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
It was achievable but would not happen overnight, Ashton said.
"We have the technology we need for the next stage of this effort and the world is not short of the capital it will need to drive the transition to a low-carbon energy system ... "
Ashton expects the United States to rejoin the international effort to combat climate change.
"It is very striking going to the United States now [to see] how far the debate has moved in the last two or three years.
" It is now no longer a question of if but when the United States will come back in, very constructively, to the international conversation," he said.
"I think it will happen quite soon. You are already seeing states such as California committing themselves to a very aggressive approach to low carbon. Big US corporations are doing the same."
Ashton indicated that the British Government did not support calls from Paris for the European Union to adopt some kind of carbon tariff or other border measures to protect its domestic markets as it adopts more ambitious emissions reduction targets.
"The EU environment ministers the other day made a commitment that we would cut emissions by 20 per cent unilaterally, whatever happens in the the negotiations about the post-2012 framework," he said.
"They also said that if other industrialised countries make a comparable commitment then we will move to 30 per cent.
"How we will do that is yet to be decided. [But] the debate in Europe is about how we keep the European economy competitive. There is a consensus developing that a competitive economy has to be a low-carbon economy.
"We have to be very careful as we go forward on climate that we don't generate negative dynamics in the international conversation about trade.
"I think we very much agree with the European Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, who has expressed a great deal of concern about those punitive [trade] approaches."
On the issue of food miles Ashton said ways had to be found of recognising in the traded prices of goods their "carbon externality" or environmental side-effects. But the issues were complex and any approach would have to be equitable.
"We have to move the international conversation on to a much stronger evidence base, away from a kind of rhetorical politics of climate change.
"I can certainly understand the special issues - and they are quite special - that New Zealand's geographic position would mean for the its economy."
Helen Clark said: "One of the very strong reasons for making the sort of statement we have about sustainability is that we have to counter the sorts of protectionism that are coming from our competitors both as food suppliers and with respect to travel.
"We can reposition. It is urgent. I believe we are on sound ground but we will be on sounder ground as we show we are moving down a sustainable pathway."
