Report blasts global warming strategy

Date: 14/09/00

By Gareth Harding

A PROMINENT member of the European Parliament's environment committee has delivered a damning verdict on the Commission's planned climate change strategy, just weeks before the start of a major international conference on global warming in The Hague.

In his draft report, Portuguese Christian Democrat Jorge Moreira da Silva attacks the European Climate Change Programme (ECCP), arguing that it is unambitious, ill thought-out and over-reliant on 'flexible mechanisms' such as emissions trading.

Moreira complains that instead of drawing up a list of properly-costed policies to meet the Union's climate change goals, the Commission has "merely produced an organisation chart for the ECCP and a strategically meaningless list of common and coordinated policies and measures".

Criticising the lack of sectoral targets for reducing emissions, the MEP concludes that the policy paper is "so vacuous that it is difficult to see why it has been submitted at all". Moreira argues that the Commission should tear up the document and publish a new paper containing specific reduction targets for each economic sector. He also calls on the Commission to rely less on so-called 'flex-mex' measures, and more on tried and trusted means of reducing emissions such as renewable energy sources.The ECCP was launched by Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström in March as a way of reversing the EU's mushrooming emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

At an international climate change conference in Kyoto three years ago, the Union pledged to slash such gases by 8% by 2008-2012. However, the latest figures from the European Environment Agency predict that instead of falling, greenhouse gas emissions are likely to rise by 6% within the same timeframe.

Moreira notes that the "very alarming trend" in emission levels is not only contrary to the provisions of the Kyoto protocol which the Union signed up to, but also "undermines the credibility of the EU's position at the international level". He says Europe has never wasted an opportunity to chastise countries such as the US and Australia for not doing enough to combat global warming, but argues that the upward trend in European greenhouse gas emissions makes a mockery of the Union's supposed leadership role. "There is little point in criticising the attitude of the United States if what we are proposing continues to be so greatly at variance with what we do," he insists.

The Parliament's environment committee will discuss the draft report later this month. Although it is expected to tone down many of the blunt criticisms made by the rapporteur, members of the committee say that MEPs will use the debate to urge the Commission to take a tough stand during November's talks on how to implement the Kyoto protocol.

A prominent member of the European Parliament's environment committee has delivered a damning verdict on the Commission's planned climate change strategy, just weeks before the start of a major international conference on global warming in the The Hague.