NEXT US PRESIDENT WILL LEAD CLIMATE FIGHT, BILL CLINTON SAYS
10.8.07 - Leído 93 veces. Enviar esta notaHelena Spongenberg
The US – the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter - is getting ready to fight global warming and cut its CO2 emissions, says former US president Bill Clinton
TÓRSHAVN, Faroe Islands; October 8, 2007.- “I believe the United States, after the next presidential election, will move to the forefront of the global environment movement. I think we will set a ceiling on carbon emissions and…set up a [carbon] trading system,” Mr Clinton said while speaking at a business conference on the Faroe Islands this week.
“No politician anywhere in the western world will be defeated for taking a forward looking position on climate change,” he said, adding that “we just have to keep pushing.”
Mr Clinton gave the example of EU members Sweden and the UK which are on their way to passing their Kyoto targets – an international UN commitment made in 1997 for the industrialised world to cut their CO2 emissions eight percent below 1990-levels by 2012 – and of Denmark which has managed to score significant economic growth without using more energy.
“They made a commitment to a clean energy future…Every country is going to have to follow this path,” said the US politician whose wife is a Democrat candidate for America’s presidential elections in 2008.
The 27 EU member states committed themselves earlier this year to cutting their CO2 emissions by 30 percent by 2020 if the rest of the world’s major emitters would sign up to such an agreement as well - or by 20 percent if such a global deal fails.
The European Commission will on December 5 come forward with a plan on how the bloc should achieve these goals.
Meanwhile, the global warming discussion is picking up speed in the US although Washington has avoided making any international commitments on fighting greenhouse gas emissions, known to be a major contributor to global warming.
WORK WITH THE UN, SAYS BRUSSELS
The EU is eager to get the US to agree on a new international climate deal, arguing that this is the key to getting other big CO2 emitters on board like Australia, China and India.
“Our efforts to combat climate change will only be successful if the international community is ready to engage in a comprehensive and ambitious global cooperation,” EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas told MEPs in Brussels on Monday (1 October).
He added that the need to act together to fight climate change “is now fully acknowledged by the US administration and the US domestic debate on climate change is steadily growing.”
“However,” the commissioner said, “it is only in the UN context that international negotiations can take place.” He added that creating other agreements would undermine a UN deal and that targets must be mandatory with compliance measures for them to be taken seriously.
Current US president George Bush rejected mandatory limits on CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions last week, saying that voluntary measures and new environmental technologies were central to fighting global warming.
A UN climate conference in Bali in December will be the first real test of how committed the international community is to the fight against climate change.
(EUobserver)
