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CLIMATE CHANGE: EU Saying, Not Doing, the Right Things

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Nov 25 2008 (IPS) - Senior European Union figures are portraying themselves as champions of sound ecological policies ahead of the international climate change negotiations that begin in Poznan, Poland Dec. 1. Stavros Dimas, Europe’s environment commissioner, this week described a series of measures being considered by the bloc’s 27 governments as “easily the most far-reaching legislative package on fighting climate change anywhere in the world.”

Green activists who have assessed the small print of these measures are less impressed, and believe that the EU’s rhetoric is not being supported by solid action.

One of the main reasons why the Union cannot genuinely claim to be displaying leadership, they say, is that it has so far been unwilling to undertake drastic cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide, the main gas triggering climate change, within its own borders.

In 2007, the EU’s governments committed themselves to a minimum 20 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2020.

Yet the latest version of proposals on their table suggest that about 65 percent of those cuts would not actually take place at home. Rather they would be ‘offset’ by financing ‘clean development’ in other parts of the world.

Greenpeace campaigner Joris den Blanken points out that this “total lack of domestic action” means that EU governments could be able to claim that they have reached their targets solely through the reduced energy consumption that a few mild winters would bring.

He argues, too, that the clean development mechanism on which the Union is pinning its hopes has proven seriously flawed. To date, about 40 percent of the measures undertaken as part of it “do not deliver real reductions” in greenhouse gases, he argued, adding that some of the projects supported in China have proven environmentally damaging because they involve the release of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Banned in Europe, HFCs are “extremely potent greenhouse gases”, according to Greenpeace.

The economic crisis has led some EU governments to contend that the measures on the table for fighting climate change are too costly. Among the most vociferous of them are the right-leaning coalition led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Italy.

Although business lobbyists have been furiously trying to water down the EU’s measures, many analysts contend that protecting the environment is economically prudent. At a time when unemployment is rising, renewable energy and other low-carbon projects are regarded in some quarters as offering enormous potential for creating jobs.

“At the moment, there are 150,000 jobs in the environmental sector,” said Sonja Meister from Friends of the Earth. “This could easily be trebled with the right investment. The EU has to use this change to come forward with the necessary structural changes.”

Stephan Singer from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) suggests that countries that are poorer than the EU may be taking climate change more seriously.

He recently returned from a visit to China, which overtook the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases during 2006. Yet despite its enormous pollution levels, Singer noted that China is the biggest investor in renewable energy worldwide, supplying many of the solar panels that are found on German roofs. “If China is waking up (to climate change), Europe is looking very old,” he said. “The idea that the EU is going to be the leader is nonsense.”

Because Barack Obama has not yet been installed as U.S. president and the outgoing Bush administration is routinely described as a ‘lame duck’, the 11-day Poznan gathering is not expected to conclude with a major breakthrough. It should instead prepare some of the groundwork for negotiations during 2009 that are supposed to culminate in the reaching of an international agreement about 12 months from now in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.

Matthias Duwe from Climate Action Network Europe says that the Poznan conference needs to grapple with such matters as how poor countries will be helped to adapt to water shortages and other consequences of global warming, the emissions caused by deforestation, and the future of the clean development mechanism.

Duwe is unimpressed by how the EU’s governments have not yet agreed on a robust package of measures. Although the European Commission put forward a number of proposals in January, they have not yet been endorsed by the bloc’s member states. “European governments have been somewhat paralysed,” he added. “The EU really needs to get its act together very quickly.”

Oxfam, the anti-poverty organisation, estimates that at least 38 billion euros (49.5 billion dollars) will be needed per year if poor countries are to cope with global warming. It is calling on the EU to provide about 30 percent of that sum, in order to reflect both its wealth and its share of global emissions.

Elise Ford from Oxfam’s Brussels office cited estimates that 250 million people are likely to face drastic water shortages by 2020. “The world’s poorest countries are not the cause of climate change,” she said. “But they are the ones most affected by it and with the least resources to deal with it. Europe has an obvious responsibility here.”