The EU commissioner for climate action and energy has praised the 149 nations who set out their aims to tackle levels of carbon emissions.
His declaration comes at a time when many countries are beginning to announce their climate change action plans in the build-up to the climate summit in Paris.
He described the progress towards an international agreement as “quite astounding” and that he would not have believed it possible to have reached this stage if he had been asked six months ago.
However this praise came with a warning that the pledges set out by the nations were still not strong enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.
He stated:
“There are many, many reasons to be cheerful. The fact that 149 countries to date have presented the United Nations their commitments to fight global warming is astonishing.
“We have countries which together produce nearly 90% of global emissions – so that’s a big effort. If we compare it with the Kyoto Protocol – the first time we tried an international agreement to help global warming – there were only 35 countries and they covered less than 14% of emissions.
“It’s quite astounding. The most important things is that the commitments are not only figures or targets – it shows countries are developing climate policies in a very comprehensive way.”
Governments Taking The Iniative
One of the biggest positives about the plans being set out by national governments, according to Mr Canete, was the fact that they were being set out by the nations’ own volition and not because of top down enforcement by the UN.
He went on to say:
“There is no complacency – but we if we had kept on going with business as usual (ever-rising carbon emissions), global temperature would have raised between 3.8 and 4.7C,”
“We estimate that current commitments achieve about 3C maximum. That’s a big step, although clearly it’s not enough.”
The chief scientist of the United Nations’ environmental programme, Professor Jacquie McGlade, stated that:
“I am very surprised in a positive way – the normal procedure for these events has been governments brought kicking and struggling to the table.
“Now I see member states, citizens are willingly pledging for transformational change in society. It’s a participatory progress so you do feel it will stick when we leave Paris (the climate conference next month),”
Dangerous Climate Change Still Possible
She said that Gabon had been one of the countries to approach this with particular enthusiasm.
“When countries saw the big players – the EU, the USA – put their figures on the table, there’s a bit of copycat – which is a good thing.”
“Some countries sent in their commitments and having seen other countries, they took them away and came back with more ambition. That tells you this is going to be a race to the top, not the bottom.”
McGlade lives in Nairobi and had witnessed firsthand the level of commitment that Africa is now displayed- a determination that she feels outstrips even large western countries.
“There is a sense that this is a universal problem – the ‘them and us’ is beginning to disappear,”
“Africa is becoming more and more conscious that it has to be a leader (on energy) if it wants to attract investment. You see Africa approaching this with an appetite, then you see a country like the UK not being pro-active in a way we would have recognised before.”
