Brussels, 10/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - Opening a two-day conference in Brussels on 10 February on options allowing for greenhouse gases caused by air-conditioning to be reduced, the European Commissioner for the Environment, Margot Wallstrom told participants that their indications would be "an important input to legislation that I intend to present later this year".
At a general level, Ms. Wallstrom recalled that over a hundred countries had now ratified the Kyoto Protocol, "including nearly al the industrialised countries". "The only step that separates us from its entry-into-force is the ratification by Russia, and we are confident that Russia will ratify as Prime Minister Kassianow announced at the World Summit in Johannesburg last summer", she added, warning: "We continue to remind them of this promise, and I will join an EU delegation to Moscow in early March to do so again. This is a question of Russia's international credibility". As for the EU, Wallstrom noted that "Our per capita emissions in the EU are 9 times higher than per capita emissions in India. How could we argue that we do not have a duty to act first?".
The Kyoto commitments are "technically and economically feasible", the Commissioner insisted, citing large initiatives taken or being envisaged by the Commission under the European Programme on climate change: use of bio-fuels in transport, energy efficiency of buildings, fluoride gases… All these measures come on top of other measures already undertaken, for example, to promote the use of renewable energy and the fuel-efficiency of passenger cars, she stressed, citing agreements with the European, Japanese and Korean car manufacturers providing a reduction in the average emissions of new cars in the order of 25% between 1995 and 2008/2009. "We shall begin negotiations over further reductions towards the end of this year", she announced.
As for emissions from the use of air conditioning, Ms. Wallstrom recounted a short story going back to last summer, one of the hottest summers ever recorded in Sweden. A young man sensitive to environmental protection (and who had therefore bought a car in accordance with his convictions), goes to the family summer cottage for his holidays, but while driving "a little too fast", he it's a rock thereby damaging the air-conditioning unit. His father, who happens to be an expert in greenhouse gases, the explains to him that he will have to stop driving for six months to compensate for the global warming effect of the refrigerant that escaped from the broken air-conditioning unit…