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Monday, October 27, 2008

A Warsaw-Beijing pact on climate change?

According to Reuters, the Poles are calling in some heavyweight support in their bid to outflank the EU on tough new conditions for coal burning industries.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a press conference in Beijing Thursday:

"I expect that in China we will find an ally for the global climate talks. We are in a similar situation due to our coal-based economies. We cannot allow fighting climate change to destroy them."

Any global deal on climate change will be close to useless without Chinese backing, meaning Poland's position would be considerably strengthened by any alliance with Beijing on this issue. This follows earlier endorsement for Warsaw from fellow ex-communist EU members and a big western European power in Italy.

As we argued before, the potential for European consensus on climate change policy has undoubtedly been damaged by the overly interventionist and centralised approach adopted by the Commission.

This bodes ill for any EU agreement by the end of the year, and more importantly, any global deal.

1 comment:

John McClane said...

Good. The EU is a paper tiger, good for lamp bulb legislation but useless in a financial crisis or a confrontation with Russia. Climate change is not proven.

Word verification: fablescu. Is that a fairytale Romanian dictator?