Guardian UK: How Europe Can Save the World

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How Europe can save the world


The EU's landmark deal on carbon controls must be the model for a new Kyoto agreement

Will Hutton
Sunday March 11, 2007
The Observer

Of the many noxious legacies of Mrs Thatcher, perhaps the most poisonous is the idea that somehow the British are not European. She taught her party, the media and a large part of the country that any European initiative was necessarily hostile to our interests and originated in a mindset of which we are not part. The British may be geographically European; culturally and politically, we are different.

It was nonsense. This weekend, the European Union has struck a deal which is arguably the most important since its foundation 50 years ago - which was how some in Brussels described it to me - and should help persuade even the most Eurosceptic curmudgeon that the EU has crucially important uses. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, emerging as a European politician in the great tradition of Adenauer, Brandt, Delors, Mitterand and Kohl, has used the current German presidency of the EU to mastermind an epic commitment on tackling climate change and energy security.

The 27-nation EU has committed itself to lower its carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 from their 1990 level, the chief mechanism being an increase in the use of so-called renewables - water, air, tidal power and biofuels. Twenty per cent of its energy needs, it says, will come from such sources, while allowing some flexibility for countries such as France, which is dependent on nuclear power, to count that as part of their contribution to reducing the Continent's carbon footprint. Nuclear power, clean coal and renewables are vital responses to weaning the Continent off its dependence on Middle Eastern oil and Russian gas.
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The deal matters globally. In December, the UN will convene the key meeting in Indonesia to begin the discussions about what treaty will succeed Kyoto. It needs to be tougher on targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and it needs to include the Indians, Chinese and Americans. Anything less and the world is at risk. With the EU agreement, there is a genuine chance the logjam could be broken; the other countries know that the Europeans are going ahead - they only have to follow. If they do, the EU has promised to lift its own targets by another 10 per cent.

For pro-Europeans like me, there has been little to cheer about over the last 10 years. But, extraordinarily, the EU is recovering its sense of purpose. Who knows? It may even soon be safe for Britain's political class to start believing that there are votes in being pro-European. ........

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2031235,00.html