14 DAY TRIAL // The European Union (EU)'s environment chief announced on Friday that the Copenhagen conference, scheduled to take place at the end of this year, was the cornerstone in the fight against global warming. He cautions that, if important steps aren't taken to address this issue at the next global summit, then the world could miss its only opportunity to start tackling the problem before it's too late. The UN meeting, which will most likely take place in December, has to conclude with better results than the previous one, held in Potsdam, Poland, last December.
By 2012, the Kyoto Protocol, which currently regulates the amounts of carbon dioxide that are emitted into the atmosphere, as well as the maximum allowed limits of other greenhouse gases, will come to an end, and politicians will need to have another treaty completed by that time.
The meeting in Copenhagen is aimed at resolving just that issue, by providing the 190 states attending it with another international legal framework. Should it get adopted this year, starting with 2013, the new treaty will go into full effect, basically replacing all the rights and obligations of the Kyoto agreement, which was signed in 1997 in Japan.
“It is now 12 years since Kyoto was created. This makes Copenhagen the world's last chance to stop climate change before it passes the point of no return. Having an agreement in Copenhagen is not only possible, it is imperative and we are going to have it,” Stavros Dimas told at the climate change conference on Friday. He is the Environment Commissioner for the European Union.
“President Obama's commitment to re-engage the United States fully in combating climate change is an enormously encouraging sign that progress is possible. So are positive initiatives coming from China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies. Developed countries will have to go further, with cuts of 80-95 percent in order to (enable) developing countries to lift themselves out of poverty,” he added.
“The European Union is committed to increasing its reductions targets from 20 percent to 30 percent (by 2020) on two conditions. Firstly, that our partners in the industrialized world commit to comparable cuts, secondly, that developing countries agree to take action in line with their capabilities. The Copenhagen agreement will have to involve a major scaling up of financial aid to help developing countries to both mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change. If there is no money on the table, there will be no deal,” he concluded.