Monday, 15 December 2008

Europe’s Climate Policy For Dummies = 4% by 2020...

Just what did they all decide at Poznan ?
From OXFAM..."The lack of progress at Poznan merits outrage," said Barry Coates, senior executive of charity group Oxfam International."They have left themselves with a huge amount to do to secure a deal at Copenhagen next year."
From Prometheus...The agreement allows countries to exceed their annual emissions targets by 5% annually. So this extra headroom reduces the total emissions reduction goal to about a 4% reduction (very similar to what WWF calculates). A 4% reduction is not so far from business as usual (under some projections), which of course is why the package passed.
And this does not get into any of the other loopholes, like for Lithuanian nuclear plants, the Polish, German, Italian, etc. economies, or unusually cold or warm weather. Oh yeah, the entire agreement is subject to review and is contingent upon what happens in Copenhagen.
The Obama administration should be paying attention.

Read the whole article from Prometheus here... and from Time magazine here...
...In short, more gabble and pretense, little in the way of specifics but plenty of pious grandstanding, all in the desperate hope that Barack Obama will commit the U.S. to economic suicide...
Our representative at Poznan; Tim Groser, has yet to report back to Rodney Hide (the only environmental scientist in Parliament). Expect an interesting press release...

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