EU Outline Plans To Fight Climate Change

March 9, 2007 · Filed Under Politics 

The European Union have announced ambitious plans to lead the fight on climate change. It was some regard as Tony Blair’s last chance to leave office with some degree of positivity, the aim of the plans are to lead the rest of the world into taking up the challenge of climate change.

The BBC outline the proposals and offers an explanation on each element of the plan. The main aim of The EU is to obtain a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. At the same improvements in energy efficiency, use of renewable energy and use of biofuels are proposed.

An interesting part of the proposal is “The EU has yet to decide how to share out the burden of meeting the 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions - some countries will have to do more, while some do less”. Obviously the countries with the highest CO2 emissions, and that includes The Top 5 (in order) - Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands, will be responsible for the bulk of the reduction.

How those countries will bring about their share of CO2 reduction, and whether they’ll be political wranglings over who has how much to reduce remains to be seen. The proposals by The EU are, as ever, a step in the right direction, but the big countries, and especially The UK, now need to start doing.

For example, Wind Power already provides 20% of Denmark’s electricity - if Mr Blair wants to be remembere as a PM who led the fight on climate change, then he needs to start pushing the UK forward as a leader for new technologies, not a country left behind and telling everyone else what to do.

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