Europe’s Leadership in Carbon Control at Risk in Credit Crisis

Europe’s role as a global leader in combating climate change risks becoming the next victim of the global financial crisis.

As the threats of global recession and rising unemployment loom after the expensive bank bailouts, some European leaders are demanding that the trade bloc backpedal on a pledge announced with much fanfare last spring to cut greenhouse emissions by 20 percent and to generate 20 percent of power through renewable sources by 2020.
At a meeting Monday in Luxembourg, the Italian environment minister, Stefania Prestigiacomo, warned that her country had “many requests for changes,” and would support turning the potentially expensive pledge into law only if the issue could be reviewed again next year.

“There is now a greater possibility that the E.U. misses a deadline it set for itself,” Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said Monday. “That would call into question Europe’s willingness to back up an offer that was applauded by the whole world with specific policies.”

European leaders left the meeting last week saying that they would need unanimity to push forward.

Meanwhile, the American presidential election is likely to make the United States’ policy on climate change more proactive. That could further diminish the global influence that Europeans have so far been able to claim.

New York Times