by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Warsaw, Poland - Tackling climate change will help, not hinder, the efforts of the governments to overcome the global financial crisis, the environment chief of the European Union said recently.
The 27-nation European Union has set ambitious goals to curb carbon dioxide emissions by a fifth by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, partly by making power generators and heavy industry pay for permits to pollute in its emissions trading scheme.
So far, it has to be said though, it does not appear that we will ever meet those targets by that dateline.
Critics have said that the financial crisis makes it very difficult for industry to make the necessary big investments in clean energy.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told reporters in Warsaw, that the EU thinks this climate package is consistent with solving the financial crisis. He continued to say that at the moment, people are focused on the economic crisis, but that the package is indeed part of the solution.
"Fighting climate change means investment in energy efficiency, promoting renewable sources and providing incentives to stimulate the economy and contribute to growth,” he said
The EU also argues that moving to a low-carbon economy will create jobs and reduce the bloc's exposure to volatile prices of fossil fuels such as oil and coal which lead to global warming,m and also make them dependent, and this is probably more in the forefront of their thoughts, on countries such as the Russian Federation and the fickle whims of the likes of the Russian Prime Minister.
Poland and other ex-communist countries that our now member states of the European Union have expressed concern that carbon dioxide curbs could stunt their economic growth by sharply increasing energy prices.
Asked if the Commission was willing to make amendments to its package, Dimas said that it is not for the Commission to accept amendments, but that that is the task for the European Council (of national governments) and for the European Parliament.
According to Dimas the package is just an instrument to achieve the climate change targets that have been agreed by member states. The Commission can make changes which do not compromise the environmental objectives.
Dimas said he was hopeful that France, the European Union's current chairman, could forge agreement among member states on the Commission's climate package by the end of this year.
According to Dimas this package is good for Europe because Europe's economy will become more efficient by implementing it.
Dimas was in Poland, along with representatives of dozens of other countries, for preparatory talks ahead of a planned U.N. conference in the western Polish city of Poznan in December that is meant to pave the way for a new global climate deal.
The current Kyoto Protocol, which does not set CO2 emission targets for major emerging economies such as China and India, expires in 2012. The United States has also not joined Kyoto.
"Nobody has said,” so Dimas when referring to those talks in Warsaw, “we should cut down our efforts because of financial crisis. They all said we should continue. We need to send a strong signal from Poznan on fighting climate change."
Properly implemented all the measures could indeed create jobs in a new green economy and – finally – make us all less reliant on oil and gas from areas where there always seems to be trouble of one kind or the other, including the former USSR that are still under Russia's influence.
Cutting CO2 emissions and those of other greenhouse gases is but one thing that we must do and while important, just in case those gases do contribute to our changing climate.
Other things are equally important and go hand-in-hand with those.
Reducing our use of fossil fuels is one for sure and not simply for the reduction of the so-called greenhouse gases but also and especially to reduce pollution, including acid rain, per se. This is something that we seem to forget.
But we seem to have such a love affair with the likes of coal, oil and gas, and especially with the internal combustion engine, that we are looking for still fuels of a similar nature though non-fossil. Help!
While methane from landfills, sewage works and from methane digesters is indeed the way to go as far as gas for cooking, etc., is concerned, we cannot call biofuels, whether diesel or ethanol, ever really clean.
In addition to that we must clean up our environment, on land and at sea, as well as the air, for otherwise it just does not matter what we do; we cannot win. There is much to be done and very little time left.
© 2009
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EU climate deal to help overcome financial crisis
