EU states lose grip on climate change targets
18.11.2005 - 09:59 CET | By Mark Beunderman
http://euobserver.com/9/20360
Further efforts are needed to tackle climate change, the UN has warned
in a fresh report, with greenhouse gas emissions in many EU states
rising instead of decreasing.
The Bonn-based United Nations Climate Change secretariat in a report
released on Thursday (17 November) warned that the western world is
losing its grip on the climate change problem.
UN researchers found that overall in the industrialised world,
greenhouse gas emissions were down 5.9 percent in 2003 compared to the
1990 levels.
But the UN report says a large part of the reductions were achieved in
Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, as heavily-polluting
industry stemming from the communist era were shut down as these
countries restructured their economies.
Richard Kinley, acting head of the UN climate change body, said: "What
we see is that the emissions from developed countries as a group have
been stable in recent years and not decreased as they did in the early
1990s. Moreover, greenhouse gas projections indicate the possibility
of emission growth by 2010."
"It means that ensuring sustained and deeper emission reductions
remains a challenge for developed countries," he added.
The EU as a bloc achieved a reduction of 1.4 percent in emissions from
1990 to 2003, still far away from the minus 8 percent target in 2012
that the Europeans have set themselves in the framework of the
international Kyoto protocol.
Former communist new member states witnessed sizable reductions as
dirty plants closed, with the largest cuts reported in Latvia (58%)
and Lithuania (66%).
However, most "old" member states have seen emissions increasing
instead of decreasing.
Eleven of the fifteen old member states have reported emissions going
up instead of down since 1990, with huge increases seen in Spain
(41.7%), Portugal (36.7%), Greece (25.8%), Ireland (25.6%), Finland
(21.5%) and Austria (16.5%).
Only Germany (-18.2%), France (-1.9%), the UK (-13%), Luxembourg
(-16%) and Sweden (-2.3%) managed to cut emissions.
Under a "burden sharing agreement" facilitated by an emission rights
trading scheme, the EU has set targets for each member state in order
for the bloc as a whole to reach the Kyoto targets.
According to the agreement, some states like Portugal and Spain are
allowed to increase their emissions, but not by the amounts the new UN
report has recorded.
--
"The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing
their memory, or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and
let them rewrite history." -- ***** Cheney 11/16/2005
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography" -- Ambrose Bierce
"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." -- John Updike
"Long term commitment in relationships is only necessary because it takes
so damn long to raise children. Marriage may well be some kind of trick
to keep the males around beyond sexual satiation." -- Captain Compassion
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
.
|
