EU: Gone are the days… (by ECO – NGO newsletter on climate negotiations)
Back in 2007, Liverpool Football Club were finalists in the UEFA Champions League. This year they didn’t even qualify. Take a peek at their targets, and you see that Europe must be experiencing a similar feeling to Liverpool. Back in 2007, when Europe signed up to a 20% cut in its emissions by 2020, the world was a different place. Bush was in the White House, and his allies in Australia and Canada hid behind his intransigence. In contrast, Europe was leading the pack. Well, gone are those days. Now Japan has tougher targets than Europe, Norway too. In the past weeks, some developing countries, in particular South Africa and Brazil have also put forward some pretty impressive proposals.
And so all eyes turn back to Europe as leaders meet in Brussels today, a huge opportunity to change the game here in Denmark. They hold the power to breathe new life into the talks, to encourage other Parties to show more ambition and to isolate those who would hold us back. They could do this to 30% now, on the way to 40%. UK’s Gordon Brown, Holland’s Jan-Peter Balkenende and Slovenia’s Barut Pahor are already calling publicly for Europe to show more leadership and increase its target. It is obvious which players are slowing the side down (ahem…Poland, Italy) and who’s lurking in midfield (ahem…France).
Climate scientists warn that every tonne of carbon counts, and economists – for example, from Ecofys and Point Carbon – have indicated that the EU could move to 30% unilaterally at little or no cost to the European economy. The European Commission and Germany seem to think they’re in Doha not Copenhagen. Climate negotiations aren’t trade negotiations! We need ambition to rise so that sea levels don’t! Not ‘I will if you will’ but ‘we will, together.’
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ECO_20091210.pdf 240.26 KB 10.12.2009 10:43
