Brussels, 03/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - Accusing the pot of calling the kettle black, Australia says that rather than berating it for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, the EU should look at itself and respect its own greenhouse gas emission reduction targets which it is failing to do at present.
This is the essence of the message of Australian prime minister John Howard in response to comments by EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas in his address opening the Intergovernmental Climate Change Group (ICCG)'s meeting of scientific experts, in which he slammed the 'political pride' of Australia which is active in combatting climate change but does not want to sign the Kyoto Protocol (see EUROPE 9399).
peaking on Radio ABC on 3 April, the Australian prime minister, John Howard, criticised Stavros Dimas for, “lecturing us about not having signed Kyoto” in Canberra, “yet the great bulk of the countries on whose behalf he speaks are falling well behind their Kyoto targets are doing less well than Australia in meeting them…Our answer to the spokesman for the European Union is look to your own affairs, get your countries complying with the targets you've proclaimed”.
The Australian prime minister was drawing on the latest figures revealed by the CITL - Community Independent Transaction Log when he sent the Europeans packing to pursue their own goal. This data is provided by industrial plants in EU member states for their verified C02 emissions levels for 2006. This centralised register seeks to guarantee accurate calculations of permitted EU emissions, which are issued, owned or transferred by companies participating in the Community emissions quota exchange system, set up by Directive 2003/83/EC. On 2 April, preliminary data indicated an increase in C02 emissions by between 1 and 1.5% compared to the previous year but this data has still not been consolidated.
By allowing the public online access to it at (http: //ec.europa.eu/environment/ climat/emission/citl_en.htm), the European Commission is keen to point out that it has not yet verified this data which was “provided by online installations and is likely to undergo substantial corrections by the relevant authorities in member states” in charge of the national registers.
Invited by the press to comment on the aggressive response by the Australian prime minister, Barbara Helfferich, the spokeswoman for Stavros Dimas said on 3 April that the Commissioner's only goal was to get the US and Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and cooperate in the international negotiations on post 2012, in view of a global system.
The spokesperson said that the EU was respecting the Kyoto targets of an 8% reduction in EU15 emissions by 2010-12 compared to 1990 levels, in compliance with the burdensharing between member states. The spokesperson said that the EU15 was 1.6% below the 1990 level, and therefore was on the right track. She said that progress towards reaching binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction and efforts to reduce annual emissions quotas allocated to the European carbons market should not be confused. The spokesperson explained that the Commission is taking this need into account in the National Allocation Plan for Emission Quotas for 2008-12.
Mr Dimas used much sharper terms when he called on the USA, “the world's numéro uno polluter in the world” (responsible for a quarter of total greenhouse gas emissions) to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and put an end to a negative attitude in international negotiations. The Commission denounced the US approach, which does not reduce emissions “because they are 16% higher than they were in 1990”. On the same day, the US Supreme Court, at the behest of eleven US states, several major cities and a collective of ecological organisations, reached a decisive ruling against the Bush Administration's refusals to legislate on greenhouse gas. This ruling confirmed that carbon dioxide is in fact an atmospheric polluting gas and that the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) is the competent authority for introducing regulation on such greenhouse gas emissions. This constitutes a victory for those fighting climate change - binding legislation. (an)