Text 11 The Strength of Europe

The European Union has led the fight against climate change. As part of its implementation of the Kyoto protocol, it set up its ground-breaking Emissions-Trading Scheme which allows companies in EU member-states' dirty industries to trade carbon-emissions permits and has thus put a price on carbon. And in 2007 the European Com­mission produced the “20/20/20 by 2020” plan: emissions cuts of

20% below 1990 levels (plus a 20% gain in energy ef­ficiency and 20% of energy from renewables) by 2020. But the plan must be approved by the Council of

Ministers and the European Parliament in 2009, and it is meeting hefty opposition –from heavy industry, and coal-dependent countries such as Poland. Getting the package through will be hard; but any backtracking in Europe will undermine America’s efforts.

A change of attitude in Beijing is also crucial to a deal in Copenhagen. It was China’s refusal to agree to any form of constraint that led America to walk away from Kyoto in 2001. These days China, now the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, accepts the need to take action against climate change; it argues that, through energy-efficiency and renewable-energy tar­gets, it is doing as much as can reasonably be expected. But the American Congress will want China to take on extra commitments – perhaps in the form of targets for particular industries – if it is to legislate cuts. And the Chinese government resists the idea that it should have to give ground in order to get America to move.

Getting progress on climate change in these three places would be tough at the best of times, and the year ahead looks like being one of the worst of times. A sub­stantive deal in Copenhagen therefore looks unlikely; but the world's leaders are not likely to give up trying to save the planet there and then. Perhaps the likeliest outcome in Copenhagen in 2009 is a repetition of what happened in Kyoto in 2000 – a big bust-up, another meeting called and a deal done the following уеаr.