BRITAIN and other industrialised countries are to draw up plans by next Easter for preventing the world warming by more than 2C.
Delegates from more than 150 countries left the second climate conference in Geneva last night charged with devising ways of cutting the world's output of greenhouse gases to less than half current levels within the next half-century.
Britain is already ahead of its current commitments, thanks to increased competition in energy markets. As a result, new measures over the next decade are unlikely to be dramatic.
Petrol prices will be steadily increased; some highly-polluting industrial processes will be replaced with cleaner alternatives and landfill taxes will probably rise to reduce methane emissions.
John Gummer, the Environment Secretary, has committed Britain to leading an international initiative to tax airline fuels. Total emissions from aircraft are equivalent to those from a country the size of Germany. Work at EU level is likely to begin on Mr Gummer's other major suggestion - preventing companies exporting old, dirty, energy-intensive factories and equipment to the Third World when they reach the end of their useful lives.
The measures needed beyond 2000 are less clear, according to Department of the Environment officials.
New technologies such as solar power and hydrogen vehicles will make a difference, but less spectacular changes could bring steeper cuts in emissions sooner.
The Geneva conference did not resolve the biggest question of all - what atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases represents a "dangerous" interference with the climate system and, therefore, what level should atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases be pegged at?
The meeting, however, is likely to be remembered as the occasion ministers accelerated the international attempt to halt man-made climate change.
