The EU's decision on the future of the planet's climate

"José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, will announce [Wednesday, November 29th] the caps on emissions that it will impose on its member states from 2008 to 2012," announces James Cameron, vice-chairman of the financial institution Climate Change Capital. "The EU member states have in several instances abdicated the responsibility of arguing for the essential deep reductions in the amount of carbon produced. Sometimes they have called duplicitously for greater action on climate change while submitting plans that would lead to no reductions and further profit their industry champions at the planet's cost. Now we have the real data, we know who misled us last year. There is a rational case for reductions across the board of anything from 10 to 20 per cent off the plans that have been submitted. ... As the Stern report tells us, there is little cost to our economies from doing what we know we have to ... But the costs of inaction are enormous."

» full article (external link, English)
More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Environmental Policy, » Corporations, » Europe