The European Union has made much of its "leadership role" in negotiating the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change in 1997 and pursuing its ratification as international law last February. But it is in danger of losing that role if Europe's greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, as they did in 2003.
Though figures published this week by the European Environment Agency showed that this increase was marginal, at 1.5 per cent overall, the worrying prospect is that the EU as a whole is moving further behind in terms of reaching its Kyoto target of cutting emissions by 8 per cent in the 2008-2012 period, compared to the protocol's base year of 1990. So far, a reduction of only 1.7 per cent has been achieved.
EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas frankly admitted that the figures were "disappointing" and said they should "further reinforce the need for Member States to fully implement all the emission-reduction actions agreed at EU level as well as their own national measures". Also this week, when the price of crude oil reached $60 a barrel for the first time, the European Commission published a Green Paper on Energy Efficiency showing that the EU could save 20 per cent of its energy consumption by 2020, the equivalent of €60 billion. Such savings would also have a considerable impact in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The Government will no doubt have taken some comfort from the fact that Ireland's emissions actually fell in 2003, but this was largely due to the closure of Irish Fertilizer Industries' plants in Arklow and Cork rather than any positive measures. The fact remains that, in 2003, we were 25.2 per cent above 1990 levels - nearly double our Kyoto target of capping the increase in Ireland's emissions at 13 per cent. As Green Party energy spokesman Eamon Ryan TD said this week, "it is time for us to break our increasing dependency on imported fossil fuels in Ireland". The measures he suggested include promoting the use of bio-fuels, running Dublin's buses on bio-gas from the Ringsend sewage treatment plant, giving householders grants to install solar, geo-thermal and woodchip heating systems and introducing a carbon tax.
Whatever sceptics may say about the practicality of some of these ideas, they are examples of the type of creative thinking now urgently needed if we are to make progress in implementing Kyoto. And though future climate change negotiations are bound to be at least as tortuous as what went before, the eventual outcome is likely to mean that much deeper cuts in emissions will be required if we are to have any chance of dealing with the most serious environmental issue confronting humanity.