EU environment ministers met in Luxembourg to talk about the cut of greenhouse gas emissions. Their aim is to finalise an EU climate change package by December. There is a huge pressure, especially because of the UN climate summit in Poland, in December. The Eu is aimed to cut CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020. But, many countries show doubts about it.
According to Italy's Environment minister "the package as it stands right now is not suitable". One of the main concerns is the proposal to introduce full auctioning of CO2 emission permits. With the economic crisis, countries in Eastern and Central Europe are unhappy at the burden of emission cuts they are expected to bear. Another problem is shown off by Germany. There is a fear that Euopean industries move to countries where they can pollute more, because of the inexistence or slight existence of restrictions over greenhouse gas emissions. As for Italy, it notices that big polluting powers such as China, USA or India, don't even respect the Kyoto Protocol that they backed out. It's unfair that the EU be the only one to take on the burden of pollution of the world.
UN is going to held an international conference in Copenhagen, next year to plan a post Kyoto course to tackle the impact of climate change. It had also urged the EU to continue to provide leadership for climate change.
This article shows a real commitment of the world (UN) and especially the EU for the greenhouse gas emissions and the climate state of the Earth. But there is still work to do. We can wonder if the other countries who didn't signthe Kyoto Protocol are going to make efforts about it. We can also wonder if the economic crisis is not going to curb the efforts because of the burden that the emission permits would put on countries.
States are creating laws and protocols to improve the impact of climate changes, but if they aren't applied by citizens, it won't really work. This need a commitment from the governments and from the citizens. We can notice that both become to be more responsible. There's a hope that together they will manage to improve even slightly, the state of the environment. But everybody has to make an effort individually, which will lead to a collective action, which could work.
dimanche 26 octobre 2008
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1 commentaire:
MARK: 16,5/20
- on time (2/2)
- heading & link (2/2)
- libellés (2/2)
- resumé para (6/7)
- comment para (4,5/7)
Comments:
- Avoid quotations in a resumé. You are perfectly capable of putting the important information into your own words.
- CO2 emissions are to be "cut by 20% by 2020", but from what level? When you quote such statistics you must be clear how you use them. You must state that this is a cut of 20% based on 1990 CO2 levels.
- Your comment para is more personal than last week's. That said, it is a little general in approach. Here you have reverted to the "bigger picture" in your analysis. This can be a very useful approach, but is probably not ideal for the blog. Your comment para ends up being a composition of generalities. The possible impact of the economic crisis on the EU's "good example" is an interesting point, but you could have spent the whole paragraph developing this point alone.
- You might have pursued alternative avenues, keeping closely to the chosen topic, eg: make the link with the limits of GDP as an expression of the "health" of an economy; discuss the difficulty of establishing a market in CO2 emissions - why are certain countries against the auctioning of emission permits?; how are negative externalities normally dealt with?; etc. You cannot treat all of these. It would however be interesting if you linked the article content closely to a topic/notion covered in class.
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