EU urges major economies to commit to fighting climate change

Prague - European Union environment officials Wednesday urged the world's major economies to join the 27-member bloc in its ambitious plans to curb global warming. 'We want to offer co-leadership to the United States and other important countries,' said outgoing Czech Environment Minister Martin Bursik, whose country currently chairs the EU. The call came some eight months before a United Nations conference in Copenhagen, which aims to set new targets for reducing emissions of gases heating up the planet. The Copenhagen deal, to be hammered out in December, is intended to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012. In a run-up to the Copenhagen summit, the EU has pledged to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. The bloc offered to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent if other developed countries joined the effort. To the EU's frustration, no other of the world's leading economy has made such a legally-binding commitment. Bursik said Japan was to present its mid-term emissions-cutting goals within a month. While US President Barack Obama has promised to 'be an active partner in the Copenhagen process and beyond', the US emissions reduction pledges have so far stopped short of the EU goals and depend on the will of the US Congress. The lack of global commitment has been stalling the debate on how to pay for alleviating the effects of global warming. 'Before we agree on a finance package we have to build a ... coalition,' Bursik said during an informal meeting of EU's environment ministers in Prague. According to EU estimates, 175 billion euros (232 billion dollars) will have to be spent each year up to 2020 to mitigate those effects, half of it by developing countries. But the EU officials were reluctant to put forward bloc's financial pledge before other big players present their commitments. They reiterated that the EU will make 'a fair contribution.' 'We think it would not be the most useful thing ... if the EU would just deliver the sum and did not have the others around the table ... delivering their parts,' said Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, whose country takes over at the helm of the EU on July 1. He said the EU first needed to determine where the funding would come from. The bloc's environment ministers agreed in March to use revenues from carbon credit auctions to mitigate the effects of climate change. According to Dimas, studies showed that the EU could make 40 billion euros from the auctions but the figure may be lower because of the global economic downturn.