DEALING WITH climate change “cannot be put on the back burner” because of the economic recession, according to European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, who described it as a “defining issue” for the EU.
He was speaking yesterday at the concluding session of the commission’s annual Green Week in Brussels, which attracted a record attendance of more than 4,500. Its theme this year was “Climate Change: Act and Adapt”.
Environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said it was “imperative” to reach agreement at next December’s UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
Referring to the slow progress of talks, he added: “Failure is not on the agenda. We need a breakthrough right now.”
Swedish environment minister Andreas Carlgren, who will be heading the EU negotiating team from July 1st, said the Swedish presidency would be aiming for an “ambitious agreement” in Copenhagen.
“Europe must not fail to keep its leadership role”, he said.
Wang Yi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences called on other countries to “stop pointing fingers” at China which was now doing all it could to reduce the “energy intensity” of its still-growing economy. “We need to move forward based on mutual understanding and trust.”
The only Chinese representative to speak during Green Week in Brussels, he said China had reduced energy intensity by 50 per cent between 1990 and 2005, and by a further 10 per cent since then. It had also set a 15 per cent target for renewable energy by 2020.
Tony Long of the World Wildlife Fund stressed the importance of underpinning any Copenhagen deal with funding to help developing countries. As for where the money would come from, he said $4 trillion was being used to prop up the world’s financial system.
He described this as “money that grows on trees”, and said some of it – between $100 billion and $150 billion a year – should be used to enable developing countries to cut their own emissions by using clean technology and also to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Karl Falkenberger, director general of the European Commission’s environment division, said this showed that “moving away from carbon dependency creates more jobs, not less jobs”.
However, he expressed concern that if China’s emissions – now the world’s highest – continued to grow beyond 2030 it would have a “very serious” impact.
As for the likely shape of any agreement, he hoped both developed and developing countries would adopt targets to cut emissions so that the increase in average global temperatures could be contained at 2°C.
“Even at that, it will mean a lot of adaptation,” he said.
