Main focus of Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Environmental policy or panic?

What should be done to stop climate change? Must we all start making changes and stop using planes, as politicians are now discussing? Current EU President Angela Merkel plans to make climate protection the main agenda at the EU summit that begins tomorrow and establish fixed goals. However, there is no consensus between the 27 EU member states on the subject.

Der Standard - Austria

Not all political proposals for protecting the climate "really make sense", writes Alexandra Föderl-Schmid, adding that "some are even short-sighted and dangerous". According to Föderl-Schmid, the proposal to "spend your holiday on the balcony" instead of travelling by car or plane to distant destinations is simply "populist". "Without getting hysterical we should implement more realistic plans: a tax on air travel which  would be invested in climate protection measures, exchanging the car-related insurance tax for a consumption-related tax in Austria to take account of the actual quantity of emissions produced. We shouldn't do things for the sake of doing things, but measures that are taken by each individual on a daily basis - when shopping, heating or getting from A to B - are necessary. One thing to be said for the current debate is that at least it's raising awareness." (05/03/2007)

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Sydsvenskan - Sweden

Per Ericson warns against rash measures in climate policy. "The more concrete the discussion gets, the clearer we are seeing the negative repercussions that certain measures will have. The potential losses for our affluent society must be weighed against the potential advantages for the environment. The EU is concerned with distributing the burden equally among EU member states. Should Swedish industry be subject to the same regulations as Finnish industry? Probably. But then we must defend our own interests. For a long time climate policy has been regarded as schizophrenic: first the EU decides to reduce CO2 emissions and then the ministers travel to Brussels to negotiate special conditions for their countries." (07/03/2007)

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Financial Times - United Kingdom

The daily considers that this week's EU spring summit in Brussels is likely to "make some brave decisions about reducing greenhouse gases, to slow down the pace of global warming. If Mrs Merkel can persuade her fellow leaders to do that, she will have made a very good start on the process of getting global agreement on a post-Kyoto accord in the Group of Eight industrialised nations, whose summit she also chairs in the summer. ... Some tough bargaining remains to be done to persuade all 27 EU members to agree on binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, backed up by a firm commitment to raise renewable energy production to 20 per cent of the total by the same date. Other difficult decisions, including energy market liberalisation, are being postponed. There are deep differences between EU members on the future role of nuclear energy: Mrs Merkel's own government is split down the middle on that score. But a clear decision on climate change will be an important signal." (07/03/2007)

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