E.U. Seeks to Regain Influence on Response to Climate Change
2010-01-19 from:SGW author:Paul Taylor
Stunned by having been sidelined in the endgame of the Copenhagen world climate summit meeting, the European Union is debating how to regain influence in the fight against global warming.
Should the E.U., the world's largest trading bloc and economic area, respond to the policy setback and the diplomatic humiliation of the bare-minimum Copenhagen accord by playing Mr. Nice, Mr. Nasty, Mr. Persistent or Mr. Pragmatic?
The first two options — setting a more ambitious example to others, or threatening climate laggards with carbon tariffs — are tempting gestures, and each has its supporters.
But when the dust settles, the 27 E.U. governments are likely to stick to their carbon-emissions reduction strategy while becoming more pragmatic about working outside the United Nations framework to achieve progress, experts say.
The E.U. went to the U.N. negotiations in Copenhagen last month seeking a legally binding agreement to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for increasingly warming the planet, with precise reduction targets that would have been subject to international monitoring and enforcement.
Despite warning signs that their goals were unrealistic, the Europeans hoped to convert the rest of the world to their own model of supranational governance.
"We have to be honest. We did not fulfill our objectives," the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, told a conference of Brussels research groups Tuesday.
In the end, the chaotic 190-nation climate conference in Copenhagen merely noted a nonbinding accord on broad principles, without commitments to numbers, reached by the United States, China, Brazil, South Africa and India in the absence of the E.U.
The European Union's environment ministers were to conduct a post-mortem on Copenhagen at an informal meeting in Seville on Saturday.
Officials acknowledge privately that the mandatory system for enforcing emissions curbs created by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is doomed because China will not accept any constraints on its future economic growth, and the United States will not join any agreement that is not binding on Beijing.
E.U. governments agreed in 2008 to cut their carbon emissions unilaterally by 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels and produce 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources.
They also pledged to make deeper cuts of 30 percent if other major economies committed to equivalent measures.
The Mr. Nice camp, made up largely of climate activists but also British and Dutch government advisers, argues that the E.U. should assert leadership by moving unilaterally to a 30 percent cut.
It is not going to happen.
Such a move would require the unanimous agreement of E.U. states, some of which are already chafing at the 20 percent commitment.
E.U. officials say any reopening of the bloc's climate change package would more likely lead to a weakening of the existing targets under pressure from industries hurting in the recession.
The Mr. Nasty camp, led by France and the steel industry, argues that the E.U. has been naïve in its climate diplomacy.