French attempts to craft a global warming pact to make the EU a world leader in tackling climate change are gridlocked, with governments unable to agree on how to share the pain and costs of slashing greenhouse gases by 20 percent within 12 years.
A European summit last night in Brussels would fail to agree on the means to the end of meeting the EU’s ambitious targets, warned diplomats and officials.
The deal has to be struck by the end of the year for the package, which was agreed unanimously by European governments 18 months ago, to become European law.
But senior officials and diplomats doubt whether that will be possible despite the fanfare that accompanied the unveiling of the policy last year.
“The targets have been agreed and we have presented them all over the world,” said Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission chief. “There will be a real problem of credibility for Europe.”
He said: “Saving the planet is not an after-dinner drink, a digestif that you take or leave. Climate change does not disappear because of the financial crisis.”
Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president and current EU president, has been told that his proposals for tonight’s summit have no chance of being supported, with some of the 27 countries arguing that the financial crisis means that the Europeans can no longer afford the huge costs entailed.
“In this difficult situation, it’s only natural that governments become more defensive and prudent,” the European Commission chief said.
On Monday, Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, told a meeting of his European counterparts that, with Europe heading into recession, the entire complex package should be renegotiated.
OPPOSITION
The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, opposed the Italian demands, arguing that if Europe was grappling with the credit crunch, it also was confronting a “resource crunch” that made the climate change package all the more urgent.
But while British ministers say they support the plan, they are also trying to water down some of its key provisions. The energy and climate change secretary, the foreign secretary’s brother, Ed Miliband, last week failed to get the rest of the EU to exempt the aviation sector from a central element of the climate change package — that which obliges Europe to obtain 20 percent of its energy mix from renewable sources by the 2020 deadline.
Sarkozy’s effort to build a consensus has already seen him scale back his ambitions, according to sources. But he has still encountered a wall of insuperable opposition on several fronts.
The heart of the plan is the so-called emissions trading scheme which forces European industries to buy permits to pollute, encouraging them to save money by becoming cleaner.
But amid furious objections, particularly from Germany, Sarkozy has proposed that especially energy-intensive industries such as the steel, aluminum and cement sectors be awarded their pollution permits for free to prevent them abandoning Europe and moving their business elsewhere. Britain and others reject the blanket exemption for these sectors.
However, there is also widespread concern that Europe will simply export jobs and businesses without making any difference to carbon dioxide emissions.
Meanwhile, environment ministers agreed on Tuesday that the world financial crisis must not halt efforts to combat global warming, the top UN climate official said.
Officials from the US, China, Canada, India, the EU and more than 30 other countries met for two days of informal talks in Warsaw before a climate conference in December.
“There was a very strong consensus that the current financial turmoil should not be an excuse to slow down action on climate change,” UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said after the talks.
“Many ministers said that addressing climate change can deliver important economic benefits that are important in the light of the current financial situation as well,” de Boer said.
GROUNDWORK
The discussions in Warsaw were aimed at laying the groundwork for a major UN climate change conference in December in Poznan that will include delegates from more than 190 countries. The conference will work out the details of a climate change accord to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
A similar debate also is under way in the EU, before its two-day summit was to begin yesterday. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has urged EU leaders to keep their promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions, despite worries that the economic slowdown will make it harder for governments and business to shoulder the extra costs.
The 27-nation bloc’s year-old deal would reduce emissions by 20 percent by 2020.
“Saving the planet does not disappear because of the financial crisis,” Barroso said in Belgium on Tuesday.
However, that EU package faces opposition from a number of members — including Poland — who fear it will curb their economic growth.
Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki called the plan “unacceptable.” But he stressed that Poland, which is heavily dependent on coal for its energy needs, “does not fear” cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020, saying that “we could even go beyond that level of emission reductions.”
But he said that a “slew of shortcomings” plagues the EU plan, which could be weeded out in further negotiations. He did not provide specifics.
Scientists say the emission of carbon and other greenhouse gases, mostly from fossil fuels, must peak within 10 to 15 years and then drop sharply to avoid potentially catastrophic changes in the climate.
The US rejected the Kyoto accord, arguing it would harm American business and that it made no comparable demands on emerging economies. China, India and other large developing countries refused to accept a binding arrangement that they said would limit development and poverty relief.
De Boer said a number of ministers at the Warsaw meeting pushed for industrialized nations to lead the way by setting specific targets for cutting emissions by 2020.
“That is the kind of clarity that the private sector also needs in terms of taking investment decisions in these difficult times,” he said.
Looking ahead to Poznan, de Boer said the December meetings there mark a “major shift” in climate change discussions as the process moves into “full negotiation.”
“There will be a draft negotiating text on the table ... containing different suggestions that have been brought forward by governments,” he said.
A final deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol is expected to be signed in Copenhagen next year.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
Australia’s opposition party yesterday withdrew election promises to prevent public servants from working from home and to slash more than one in five federal public-sector jobs. Opposition leader Peter Dutton announced his conservative Liberal Party had dropped its pledge that public servants would be required to work in their offices five days a week except in exceptional circumstances. “I think we made a mistake in relation to this policy,” Dutton told Nine Network television. “I think it’s important that we say that and recognize it, and our intention was to make sure that where taxpayers are working hard and their money is
RSS