The EU should proceed with a global climate treaty without the US, a German Green Party MP told GLOBE, an association of legislators from developed and developing countries, which together emit most of the world’s greenhouse gases. The US was not represented.
“We don’t see President Obama signing a domestic law, even if he is re-elected, for ten years,” Dr Hermann E. Ott, also the Climate Policy Spokesman of his party. “Can we all wait till then? There is no chance of the US being part of an international agreement, as we have seen from the mid-term elections in that country.”
This is the first time that such an appeal has been made on a platform where MPs of most European countries, China, Canada, Japan and the host country, Mexico, were present. It has revealed what most 130 G77 countries and China have been saying privately in corridors at Cancun.
In Germany, the opposition Green and Left parties strongly support an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the first phase of which ends in 2012. This protocol is opposed by the US, Japan, Australia and Canada because it imposes limits on emissions of polluting gases and penalties for exceeding them. The Christian Democrat and Liberal parties are also not opposed to a continuation of this protocol.
Recently, the German Parliament passed a resolution, calling for a 30 per cent cut in its emissions by 2020, using 1990 as the base year. The German government has offered to cut by 20 per cent, rising to 30 per cent if the US was party to the agreement.
{{/usCountry}}Recently, the German Parliament passed a resolution, calling for a 30 per cent cut in its emissions by 2020, using 1990 as the base year. The German government has offered to cut by 20 per cent, rising to 30 per cent if the US was party to the agreement.
{{/usCountry}}“Copenhagen was a wake-up call,” Dr Ott said during a two-day GLOBE meeting, midway through the Cancun climate summit.