Foot-dragging as the ice melts

European leaders have claimed the moral high ground in fighting climate change, but the reality is less impressive

David Cronin
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday December 3 2008 14.00 GMT

In one sense, George Bush has been a godsend for Europe's politicians. By allowing his chums in the oil industry to dictate his environment policy, he has helped decision-makers this side of the Atlantic claim they are world leaders in fighting climate change.
Stavros Dimas, the EU's environment commissioner, has exploited this opportunity to the full. Throughout 2008, he has repeatedly described a package of measures he unveiled in January as the most far-reaching legislation against global warming introduced anywhere.
Superficially, the boast may be accurate. Examine it a bit more closely, though, and it looks about as impressive as a schoolboy displaying his enormous collection of bubblegum cards in a windswept playground.
Being a leader by default rather than by conviction carries the risk of belly-flopping from the moral high ground. That is a risk to which EU figures are exposing themselves during the latest round of international climate change talks in Poznan, Poland.
While the sensible thing would have been to ensure that a robust position had been approved by all EU governments ahead of these talks, the union is going into them in something of a muddle. No agreement has yet been clinched on the final shape of the package which Dimas is trumpeting but it is almost certain that it will be diluted drastically. True to form, Silvio Berlusconi has been the most vociferous in advocating that the climate should be sacrificed to a myopic vision of economic expediency. Yet many of his fellow presidents and prime ministers are also eager to paint the EU's environmental agenda the palest shade of green they can find.
Nominally, the package put forward in January is based on the principle of "effort-sharing" between governments. The newest version of the proposals makes a mockery of that whole idea by allowing most of the reduction of greenhouse gases to which the EU has committed itself to be undertaken outside its borders by financing "clean development" schemes. So while the EU has pledged to slash its emissions by a minimum of 20% by 2020, as little as 3.5% of the reduction effort may take place at home.
This is a clever – and cowardly – ploy to avoid decisive action. The concept of offsetting that it invokes may have helped salve the conscience of frequent flyers in recent years but it is a flimsy basis on which to craft a policy for 27 countries.
Clean development is no longer an innovative idea. It has already been part of the Kyoto protocol since 1997 and in the words of India's science minister Kapil Sibal its application has been a total farce. The transfer of environmentally-benign technology to poor countries that it was supposed to usher in has occurred at a fraction of the required level. Ecologically dubious projects – such as the construction of vast dams – are also being funded in the name of clean development.
Another key component of the EU's package involves the revamping of its emissions trading system.
Earlier this year Dimas recommended that the allocation of free allowances for pollution licences – the standard practice since the system's launch in 2005 – would be "phased out progressively" from 2013 onwards.
France, the holder of the EU's presidency, is now smoothing the way for a capitulation to scaremongering by makers of chemicals, paper, glass, steel and cement. All of these industries have been warning that if they have to pay for licences they will be forced to quit Europe for countries with lower environmental standards. For the most part, their predictions of doom have not been backed up by evidence. A study by the research network, Climate Strategies, indicates that the risks of relocation are exaggerated, stating plainly that steel companies are unlikely to pack up and leave an area in which they have large capital investments, and that factors other than environmental laws are more likely to determine where a firm operates.
Nonetheless, the French are recommending that all allowances to sectors at a "high risk" of leaving the union should continue to be awarded free until 2020 at the earliest.
In September, Dimas cited reports of major ice loss in the Arctic as a reason why it is vital to move towards a low-carbon economy. More recently the environmental group WWF has published a study stating that the one degree Celsius of global warming that the planet has experienced until now may have been sufficient to completely clear the Arctic of ice. Climate change could be rapid and abrupt, rather than the gradual process that has so far been forecast, the report added.
Perhaps the most hackneyed expression in today's ecological discourse is that doing nothing is no longer an option. Doubtlessly, some of the EU's representatives will utter this phrase in Poznan. The tragedy is that they not willing to do very much themselves.