Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and his British counterpart Tony Blair have called on Europe to take the lead in efforts to prevent a catastrophic climate change, Radio Netherlands reported on Thursday.

The two made the appeal in a letter to European Union (EU) leaders on the eve of Friday's informal summit in Finland where energy will be one of the main topics of discussion.

They said climate change and energy security should be treated as two parts of the same issue -- "climate security" -- in order to address it.

"We have a window of only 10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points," the letter said.

"We know we can meet this challenge. Europe has the opportunity to lead the world in making the technology transition to a low carbon economy that will be necessary over the next few decades."

They also advocated "much more ambitious" energy partnerships with countries including India and China and called for tighter caps in the EU emissions trading scheme after 2012, possibly even linking it to non-EU countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the talks in Finland, which will touch upon Russian oil and gas sales to Europe. The European Commission has presented a plan to cut its energy use by 20 percent by 2020.

Source: Xinhua