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Press release
1 June 2007. US President Bush presented a new climate strategy by his government on 31 May 2007. After years of standstill in climate policy, the US government's position has now started to move. However, the move by the US government has the potential of diluting serious international dynamics in climate protection and letting it run into nothing. "It is important now that the German G8 Presidency, as in judo, diverts this move in such a way that it results in constructive dynamics", commented Christoph Bals, Executive Director Policy of Germanwatch. "If this fails, the Bush initiative could not be the beginning, but the end of a serious, internationally concerted process".
The US government yesterday avowed for the first time that a global climate target is required to avert a large-scale dangerous climate change. This, however, shall only be determined at the end of 2008 - i.e. exactly during the next election period in the US. The German Presidency of the EU Council, however, has to make all possible efforts to achieve a general commitment to this global target in Heiligendamm. The scientific findings of the IPCC should serve as a basis for establishing this target in the G8 Final Document. The guideline must be to avoid huge irreversible consequences, such as the melting of the Greenland ice cap or the transformation of the Amazon rain forest into steppe vegetation.
The US government wants to organise regular talks among 19 large industrialised and industrialising countries. This proposal by the US President sounds like an attempt to initiate an alternative event, thereby diverting attention from the UN negotiations on the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol for the post 2012 period and letting them run into nothing. It will now be a central task of the German G8 Presidency to turn such talks among the biggest emitters into a mere complementary element in order to ensure that a serious UN climate protection agreement for the post 2012 period will have been negotiated by 2009.
This also means that targets for individual countries can by no means be defined in the way the US President suggests. According to the US proposal, each country should define a target on its own - without binding commitment. It will now be an important touchstone for the G8 Final Document whether it will clarify that reduction targets for industrialised nations have to be determined on the basis of fair criteria and legally binding in the UN framework. This is the only way to ensure that the targets are geared to the required climate protection target and will be adhered to.
The US President furthermore - rightly - emphasises the important role of technologies. In particular with regard to energy efficiency and renewable energies, the German G8 Presidency can take up this issue constructively. The required dynamics, however, will only be brought about by long-term and binding frameworks for a climate-compatible redirection of investments in the energy, transport and housing sectors. This necessitates a clear and long-term CO2 price determined by CO2 markets, as well as long-term incentives programmes for renewable energies and energy efficiency. Besides a clear commitment to international emissions trading, this would have to be turned into an impetus for the proposal by the G8 Presidency to elaborate an international agreement on energy efficiency.
"The G8 Final Document contains four issues that are decisive for whether the Bush initiative will have destructive or constructive effects:
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