The European Commission Wednesday called for 30 percent cuts in greenhouse gases for developed countries along with other steps it hopes will provide a blueprint for global talks in Copenhagen. The EU executive also proposed 15-30 percent cuts from all but the poorest developing countries below "business as usual levels" as part of international measures it says are vital to combat climate change.
However environmental groups complained that the commission plan, which will be put to the 27 EU states at a March summit, is not ambitious enough. EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas stressed that the richer nations would have to help fund the efforts of their poorer developing counterparts, though the levels of funding were not specified.
The overall "net" spending costs - outlay minus resultant savings - was put at 175 billion euros (232 billion dollars) annually by 2020, with more than half of that required by the developing nations.
While setting out alternatives for financing the overall scheme, Dimas was quite clear that EU nations and the rest of the world would have to dig deep in their pockets for the package to be effective, or even agreed at all. "Without a credible financing package it is clear there will be no deal in Copenhagen," he told reporters in Brussels. The Danish capital will host international talks on climate change in December to discuss initiatives after the current Kyoto deal expires in 2012.
One possible funding source would be by trading carbon emissions, with the EU hoping that its own emissions trading scheme can eventually be expanded into an OECD-wide trading system. Under the commission system, the amount that any individual nation would be required to do would be calculated from variables, including national wealth per capita and efficiencies already achieved, which would make it more difficult to cut further.
Dimas dismissed the argument that the economic crisis made it less of a priority for nations to afford such measures but admitted that the commission's calculations were based on some costs unusually lowered by the downturn.
"If the figures change our figures will change," he said. The overall goal is to keep global warming to below two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, a feat which Brussels believes will require global emissions to be cut by a whopping 50 percent by 2050. Last month the bloc's leaders committed to 20 percent cuts by 2020, with a promise to reach 30 percent if the rest of the world does likewise.
Friends of the Earth said Europe was not being ambitious enough and that 40 percent emission cuts within Europe were necessary. Greenpeace and WWF complained that the rhetoric was not backed up by more concrete commitments to help developing nations.
"The commission has come up with a decent blueprint but has shown it is unable to put its euros where its mouth is and support credible amounts of aid to prevent a global climate catastrophe," said Greenpeace EU climate and energy policy director Joris den Blanken. A commission team left for Washington on Wednesday for talks with the new Obama administration which has already begun shredding the old US climate policies, signing measures to encourage production of fuel-efficient cars and vowing to lead the fight against global warming.
Dimas said that the ensuing series of bilateral negotiations would notably take in China, India, Japan and Mexico. The proposals will be discussed when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao holds talks in Brussels Friday with EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso.
"The Chinese are very serious about dealing with this important threat, they know the impact on China is going to be very, very negative," he said. China and the United States are the biggest polluters, spewing out 5.8 and 5.1 billion tons of CO2 in 2005, according to the International Energy Agency.