AUSTRALIA: October 31, 2008


GOLD COAST - The world still has the funds and ability to fight climate change and nations should not use the financial crisis to delay policies on tackling global warming, a top carbon expert said on Thursday.


James Cameron, vice-chairman of London-based Climate Change Capital, said the mobilisation of trillions of dollars over recent months had demonstrated the strength and scale of cooperation in tackling a global crisis.

"We run the risk that governments will choose to focus on the near-term crisis and allow themselves the delusion that there is more time available to deal with a crisis coming slowly from afar," he told a major carbon conference in Australia.

"So I accept that there is a danger that climate change could slip in the priority list for governments," he told delegates.

"But we have learned that we are able to cooperate across borders to deal with the financial crisis, and beyond political boundaries, so we can mobilize capital very fast and that we do so in ways that support the continuation of our market systems."

He said if governments combined that same capacity to cooperate with a matching urgency in tackling climate change, then the world could deal with both crises at the same time.

There are concerns the financial crisis has already called on large reserves of public capital and that countries would be reluctant to make near-term climate change commitments that would cost their economies or threaten jobs.

But Cameron, a senior member of one of the world's leading investors in clean-energy projects, said such a short-term focus was unwise.

"If you are making investments that are designed to deliver public good in dealing with a crisis that will undeniably cost our economies substantial amounts over decades to come, it trivialises the issue to do a near-term cost-benefit analysis."

"We are not, despite the recent drastic fall in the value of stock markets, without the capital to invest in solutions to this problem," he added.

Climate Change Capital has more than $1.6 billion in funds under management and focuses on companies and institutions affected by the policy and capital market responses to climate change, the firm says on its website.

(For additional news and analysis on the global carbon markets, please go to http://www.communities.thomsonreuters.com and sign up to our free Carbon Interactive newsletter.)

(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)


Story by David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia


REUTERS NEWS SERVICE