The EU–China Partnership features key measures focusing on low-carbon technologies, with a high priority on renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency. Photo: WWF-Canon / Claire DooleEurope can choose a path to prosperity on a new economic footing or continue to fumble along the dead end track of propping up fading industries, WWF said today in advance of tomorrow’s key European Council meeting which is expected to largely shape the EU position heading into the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December.“The choices on climate change in front of Europe’s leaders on Thursday and Friday are not complicated,” said Jason Anderson, Head of EU Climate and Energy Policy, WWF European Policy Office.
“In a world where other countries are counting the economic costs of climate catastrophe and assessing the economic benefits of new clean energy sources, Europe can either fall behind or forge ahead on the basis of this week’s decisions.
“Europe can support and play a fair role in financing a legally binding climate deal in Copenhagen or it can be a spectator to others taking the opportunities.”
It has been estimated that the global market for environmental goods and services will more than double to around EUR 1.4 trillion by 2020. In the EU, jobs in the environmental sector have already overtaken sectors such as car manufacturing, but this growth is influenced by regulatory certainty globally, regionally and nationally.
“Europe’s dilemma is clearly illustrated by the wildly differing outcomes of the ministerial running up to the Heads of State gathering,” Anderson said. “Economics ministers couldn’t agree on the vital question of helping the developing world adapt to climate change and create its own low carbon economy.
“Environment ministers were the ones out laying the basis of a new economy and a future less fraught with costly climate chaos. It was the environment ministers who pointed out that the European way of handing out carbon pollution permits to big polluters is continuing to stifle the fledgling carbon markets. And it is the environment ministers who are starting to edge towards the binding emissions reductions targets that are going to be necessary.
“WWF – and the world – would prefer that Europe’s leaders go with the clarity of the environmental advice rather than the confusion of the economic advice,” Anderson said.
“Otherwise the bloc that once considered itself the leader on climate and the environment will just slip further and further behind. If they mirror their economics ministers in not being able to make a decision, Europe will end up not even following in any satisfactory way.”
