"An EU plea to cooperate on warming"

By John Bruton

The Sacramento Bee, published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, June 30, 2007 (Story appeared in EDITORIALS section, Page B7).

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger describes the fight against climate change as our "race to the moon," and it captures well the enormous challenge we now face.

The good news is that this is a race we can win: The problem is largely man-made; the solution technically lies in our own hands.

The European Union recognized the warning signs in the early 1980s, and we are now combining measures such as cap-and-trade on greenhouse-gas emissions with research and development on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. This approach is beginning to work, and EU member states are on track to meet their Kyoto Protocol targets for reducing greenhouse gases even though their economies have grown considerably over the period.

For the future, we have set a new target of reducing emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, and we are prepared to increase that to a reduction of 30 percent if other major industrialized countries are prepared to commit themselves to equally ambitious targets. This will force us to constantly seek new and imaginative means to win this battle.

Many similar policies and practices have been adopted in California, and we are important allies in the fight against climate change. A few days after the governor signed an executive order calling for low carbon fuel standards, the European Commission proposed an almost identical policy.

But California and the European Union cannot reach the moon on their own. The challenge of climate change, arguably the most serious facing the world today, requires the commitment and cooperation of all nations. We took an important step toward that goal at this month's G8 meeting, when all participating countries agreed to "seriously consider" fighting global warming by halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. And they agreed to work under the United Nations to develop a new global agreement by 2009 to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

We are already in a far better position now than just a couple of years ago, when the United States hesitated to even acknowledge the magnitude of the problem. New data and the actions of California and like-minded states have led to a sea change in policy thinking, and the federal government is clearly concerned. We must now work together to get a credible global treaty, and have all industrial and industrializing countries commit themselves to dramatically reducing their emissions.

The Kyoto Protocol's effectiveness was clearly limited because the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases then, the United States, never ratified it. This time the United States must be on board and so too must the big developing nations who were all invited to the last G8 summit.

Europe and the United States have so far been responsible for most greenhouse gases emitted into our atmosphere, and the world quite rightly looks to us for a lead. If we lead by example the pressure on other industrializing regions to commit themselves to achievable emission targets will be enormous.

However, a successful agreement cannot simply declare targets for countries. They have to be fair and logical, and there will have to be a transparent method of verification and enforcement to ensure that all countries live up to their end of the bargain.

President Reagan was fond of the phrase "trust but verify" when referring to strategic arms limitations talks with the former Soviet Union. That principle applies to climate change commitments just as much.

We also need an international cap-and-trade system that compensates countries and industries for their costly investments in new emission-reducing technologies even though their old technologies may not yet have reached the end of their natural life.
Some countries and regions are dragging their feet, saying they cannot afford the measures required to radically reduce their emissions. But given the dire consequences of global warming, the question really is how anyone can afford not to act.

Either we make this "race to the moon," or our own planet will one day actually resemble it.