Slovenia, UK and Spain Urge Fresh Climate Change Effort from EU
The Slovenian, British and Spanish environment ministries have urged decisive action to deal with climate change. The call was made ahead of Tuesday's session of the EU Environment Council and two years after the Kyoto Protocol came into effect.
According to Monday's press release from the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, the ministers welcome the progress achieved by the Kyoto Protocol, but they also believe the treaty does not reach far enough and that more needs to be done.
If we want to prevent dangerous consequences of climate change, the EU has to take the initiative and lead the debate on further measures to deal with the climate change, Slovenia's Janez Podobnik, Spain's Cristina Narbona and Britain's David Miliband wrote in a message.
However, the challenge cannot be met by EU measures alone. Nevertheless, the EU comprises 27 countries and more than 490 million people. It is our responsibility to cut down our own emissions, the ministers wrote.
The ministers believe the EU should not avoid unilaterally pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% by 2020. As part of the international agreement it should agree to cut its emissions by further 10%.
All three ministers support the efforts of the European Commission that by 2020 all fossil fuel power plants should have carbon capture and storage systems. However, the ministers also called on the Commission to speed up the evaluation of what are realistic possibilities of carrying out this measure.
Nevertheless, the ministers agree that a different approach need to be taken as to what contributions individual member states can make, with regard to social and economic aspects.
Bold the EU energy and climate strategy should be supported by ambitious goals regarding greenhouse gases, promotion of development, use of renewable energy sources and energy sufficiency, the ministers wrote.
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