Europe catches cold after climate talks

Pallavi Aiyar, correspondent of the Business Standard, based in Brussels.

Business Standard

5 February 2010

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/europe-catches-cold-after-climate-talks/384714/

In Brussels, the seat of the European Union, the New Year has begun with much sombre soul searching. Already struggling to combat high unemployment and revive its sluggish economy, the outcome of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen has deepened the sense of crisis that has come to pervade the European project.

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In Copenhagen, the EU thus attempted to play the mediator, finding ways to bring the US on board, while persuading the major emerging economies to commit to more than they seemed willing.

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Ignored by the US and disparaged by the developing world, Europe is now left struggling to devise ways in which to revive its lost influence and, thereby, restore a sense of purpose.

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China is the easiest target and has correspondingly been put up as the chief fall guy in the European media, with the UK climate secretary, Ed Miliband, openly claiming that China “hijacked” the Copenhagen summit.

The US’ less-than-edifying role in the process has also caused a few low grumblings in Brussels’ corridors of power, but these are kept from getting too loud. To point the finger squarely at the US is politically difficult for the EU, which, despite chafing against many of the actions of its trans-Atlantic ally, remains tied to it both militarily and ideologically.

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In her hearing before the European Parliament last month, the new European commissioner-designate for climate action, Connie Hedegaard, blamed the EU’s lack of efficacy on its inability to speak with one voice.

Tom Brooks, managing director of the European Climate Foundation’s (ECF) Energy Strategy Centre, points out that strong disagreements among the 27 members of the EU resulted in its inability to “move forward itself, while asking other parties to do so”.

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The EU stuck to its 20 per cent emissions reduction offer in its notification to the United Nations last week. The idea that by unilaterally increasing its emissions cut target, the EU will regain its moral leadership on climate change is thus a strategy that looks dead for the time being.


Europe’s main strategy going forward, according to ECF’s Brooks, will be to focus less on the grand sweep of global leadership and more on the less glamorous but pragmatic work of “getting on with the internal processes of low carbon prosperity”.

“The Copenhagen Accord has ensured that the foreseeable future will be about national actions,” he says.

The greatest hope for the EU’s claims to leading the climate change fight, other analysts say, is for it to focus on developing low-carbon technologies and figuring out how best to reduce conflicts between economic growth and environmental sustainability.

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“Why does Europe define climate change, which may or may not have effects in the future, as the burning issue of the day rather than the 1.8 million children who die of diarrhoea every year?” asks a negotiator from one of the BASIC countries.

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These are issues that remain largely unaddressed or even acknowledged in the rash of post-Copenhagen post-mortems that Brussels continues to host. But, until the EU addresses these effectively, its ambitions to climate change leadership are not likely to succeed on the basis of technological innovation alone.