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Talks in Brussels stretched into the small hours of Friday as Poland battled to spare its coal industry and other states tweaked the guideline text on global warming to protect varied economic interests, from nuclear plants and cross-border power lines to farmers whose livestock belch out polluting methane.
In the end, an overall target was agreed for the 28-nation bloc to cut its emissions of carbon in 2030 by at least 40 percent from levels in the benchmark year of 1990. An existing goal of a 20-percent cut by 2020 has already been nearly met, in part due to the collapse of communist-era industry in the east. ...
But environmentalists had already complained that it could still leave the EU struggling to make the at least 80-percent cut by 2050 that its own experts say is needed to limit the rise in global average temperatures to two degrees Celsius.
EU leaders challenged the U.S. and China to step up to the plate and commit to this level of cuts by next December's climate summit in France.
This is an encouraging step in the right direction but all countries are going to have to become more ambitious than this pretty darn quickly.
I am reminded of that scene from the old Beverly Hillbillies program where Jed comes upon Jethro, who is making a dramatic show of chopping firewood with little actual progress. Jed says, "I see a lot of chopping, but few chips a flying."
We are going to need much bigger cuts than these to reach the goal of cutting greenhouse gases by 80% to stay within our goal of limiting global warming to 2 degress Celsius.
