Schwarzenegger joins Blair for final press conference

Tony Blair today gave his last press conference as Prime Minister, joining Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to issue a plea for countries around the world to join the fight against global warming.

Standing alongside the former movie star at 10 Downing Street, Mr Blair borrowed a line from one of his Terminator films to say farewell, joking: "My press officer said to me, whatever else you do this morning, don't say: 'I'll be back'."

Mr Blair insisted he was not trying to give his successor Gordon Brown advice on how to govern after he takes over as prime minister tomorrow.

Asked if he had any advice for the Chancellor, he replied simply: "No... because he is perfectly capable of doing the job on his own, thank you."

Mr Blair neither confirmed nor denied reports that he is to be appointed an international envoy for peace in the Middle East.

But he hinted strongly that he was ready to take up a job seeking agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, saying: "I have said on many occasions I would do whatever I could to help such a resolution come about."

Mr Schwarzenegger said he would back Mr Blair's appointment as envoy for the quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia which is leading the international drive for Middle East peace.

But the governor, who has made the battle against climate change a personal crusade, added: "Out of selfish reasons I hope that he becomes the envoy for the environment and brings all the countries of the world together to join some kind of treaty - a Kyoto kind of treaty - that everyone can join and we can all together reduce greenhouse gases.

"I think the Prime Minister is the only person who can do that."

Asked how effective he thought he could be in a new international position after he leaves office, Mr Blair replied: "I don't know, because I am not retired yet.

"Maybe one of the benefits when I do step down - and I remember President (Bill) Clinton once saying this to me - is you can then focus on specific issues with a greater intensity than when you are having to deal with the whole gamut of issues as Prime Minister. We will see."

He made clear, jokingly, that he would be glad to be rid of the duty as Prime Minister of facing questions from the media.

"This will be the last press conference I will be giving to you guys," he said, with a wry smile on his face. "That's something I'm really going to miss."

Both Mr Blair and Mr Schwarzenegger stressed the importance of getting international agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases once the targets set in the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.

And they both said it was vital that a new agreement has the backing not only of America - which refused to ratify Kyoto - but also China and India, which are fast heading towards becoming the world's biggest carbon emitters.

Mr Blair made clear he would have liked to see the US come on board with Kyoto in 1997, but indicated he believes it is now possible President George Bush will sign up for a successor deal.

"It would have been better if we had acted sooner, that's the truth," he said, when asked about America's tardy response to the problem of global warming. "The important thing now is that we have agreement."

Mr Bush's readiness to agree with other leaders of rich industrialised countries at this month's G8 summit in Germany to look for ways to stabilise global temperatures was a vital breakthrough, Mr Blair suggested.

He said: "For the first time at the G8 a few weeks ago, we have an agreement on the basic principles for a new global deal on climate change, we can agree a goal for stabilising the climate, we can agree that it has to be a framework that involves everybody - in particular America and China - and we can agree the type of mechanisms that are going to get us there."

The "urgency" achieved at the EU Heiligendamm summit would give momentum to global warming conferences called by the US in the autumn and the UN in December, making agreement on a successor to Kyoto more likely, said Mr Blair.

The Prime Minister said he did not believe America would sign up to any agreement that did not include China, while China would not sign up to anything which prevented its people improving their standards of living.

But he made clear he did not regard Mr Bush as a block to agreement, provided the right deal could be devised.

"I think people understand that if the President can get agreement on a global deal, he will actually deliver that agreement too," he said.

Mr Schwarzenegger said that it had been down to state governors like himself, rather than the US Federal Government, to show leadership on global warming - though he stressed this was a normal procedure in the US, where Washington often allowed individual states to act as testbeds for innovative policies.

"The US is states and counties and cities," he said. "Washington is just a little dot. Why should we wait for Washington?"

It was not good enough for the US to demand action on climate change from developing countries, when it produced 25% of the world's carbon emissions with just 5% of its population, said Mr Schwarzenegger.

"The idea of continuing to say that 'China should come in otherwise I'm not going to', that doesn't work. We have to show leadership."

Mr Schwarzenegger described the UK as a "model" for California, which had inspired him to believe it was possible to combine economic growth with environmental protection.

Both Mr Blair and Mr Schwarzenegger made clear they regard technological innovation as a key to solving the problem of global warming, through more efficient energy production, cleaner cars and planes and emerging techniques like carbon sequestration to prevent the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Business opportunities could make clean technology the "new gold rush", said the California governor.

And he added: "Technology in the end is going to save the day. Technology is going to save the environment. The faster we can improve technology with cleaner cars, cleaner jet engines and so on, the better it is."