Ambassador's Corner
WEEKLY MESSAGE FROM AMBASSADOR JOHN BRUTON
December 4, 2007
UN Conference on Climate Change
Yesterday the long-awaited UN Conference on Climate Change got underway in Bali in Indonesia. It is a vitally important Conference for the future of the world.
The Human Development Report of the United Nations, published last week, shows how radical the change in our lifestyles will have to be. The development model that has been followed by the industrialised countries simply cannot be followed by the rest of the world. This is not a new insight.
Mahatma Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1948, once asked how many additional planets would be needed if the people of India were to follow the path of industrialisation that Britain had followed in the 19th and 20th centuries. The UN has estimated that we would need nine new globes to bear the environmental burden, if all the world's populations generated greenhouse gases at the same rate as do some developed countries.
With only 15% of the world's population, industrialised countries account for almost 50% of all global emissions of CO2 although the proportion being generated by the rapidly industrialising economies of China and South and South East Asia is rising rapidly.
The average American generates 20 tons of climate changing CO2 per year.
The average Russian generates 10 tons.
The average French person generates 6 tons.
The average Chinese generates 4 tons.
The average Brazilian 2 tons.
The average Indian 1.2 tons, and
the average Bangladeshi just 0.3 of a ton of CO2 a year.
Yet, the most immediate effects of climate change will not be felt by Americans by Russians or by Europeans, but by people like the Bangladeshis, who only generate 0.3 of a ton of CO2 per person per year!
Two hundred sixty-two million people were affected by climate disasters between 2000 and 2004. Over 98% of those 262 million people lived in the developing world.
When climate disasters strike, the poor are often forced to sell productive assets, to cut back on meals and to take children out of school.
Children often suffer permanent damage through malnutrition arising from severe droughts. In Niger, children aged 2 or less, born in a drought year, are 72% more likely to grow up permanently stunted.
There are 1 billion people living in urban slums on fragile hillsides or on flood prone riverbanks who face acute vulnerabilities to flooding generated by climate change.
The Andean region, including countries like Peru, faces imminent water security threats because of the gradual disappearance of tropical glaciers. There were 1,958 square kilometres of glaciers in Peru in 1970. Now there are only 1,370 square kilometres.
The burden of dealing with this huge problem must be shared fairly. No one can be exempt from making some contribution, but those who have already put the biggest amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere must make proportionately the biggest contribution.
The EU has taken a clear position on this. EU Ministers have agreed that we should limit global warming to 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial temperatures. They have agreed that reductions in CO2 emissions should be made legally mandatory in developed countries. If there is a global deal, the EU is proposing to reduce its own emissions to 30% below their 1990 level by 2020, and by 20% even if there is no global deal. This involves real sacrifices and goes far beyond anything the EU has done already. While the EU has almost met its Kyoto targets, this has involved the closure of inefficient power plants and the purchase of emissions reductions in other countries. The next phase will be more difficult.
The EU is very appreciative of the efforts being made here in the United States to tackle this problem. This week I will be meeting Senator John Warner, who is co-sponsor of the Warner/Lieberman Bill, which will introduce caps on CO2 emissions in the US. Cooperative efforts involving all countries are essential.
Part of the answer to climate change will be found through new technologies.
The European Commission last week published the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan entitled "Towards a low carbon future." It pointed out that Europe has unfortunately been cutting back on research into new technologies for energy generation since the 1980s, because oil prices were so cheap for so long. If EU governments were investing today in energy research at the same rate as they were in 1980, they would be investing four times as much.
The European Commission has called for research on second generation biofuels, on carbon capture, on large wind turbines, on large-scale photovoltaic solar power and on concentrated solar power.
The deployment of these new technologies will require supporting investments in extending the electricity grid and in electricity storage. There is no point having a very efficient wind farm, if it is not connected to the grid and if one cannot store the electricity it produces until it is needed. A lack of skilled professionals is also a bottleneck in many of the areas of activity.
But it is not all about large-scale projects. Energy efficiency can play a vital role. If all electrical appliances in OECD countries met the best efficiency standards, we could eliminate emissions equivalent to taking 100 million cars off the roads.
Gun control
One of the topics that is getting an airing in the current US Presidential election campaign is gun control. This concern is not confined to the United States. The European Parliament recently agreed to legislation to strengthen gun control in the EU. The legislation creates an obligation to mark firearms at the time of manufacture for ease of tracing. It requires EU Member States to set up a computerised data filing
system to track the location of all firearms for a minimum of 20 years after original sale. It strengthens the conditions for the use of firearms by people under 18 years of age.
This is part of the EU's effort to curb violent crime and terrorism. A market in which guns are freely available is a market that can be exploited both by criminal gangs and by terrorists. In the wrong hands, automatic weapons can inflict large-scale loss of life as tragically demonstrated in Virginia earlier this year. The EU favours a comprehensive approach to controlling access to the capacity to use lethal force. In my own experience during 35 years in politics in Ireland, dealing with security threats posed by the IRA and other terrorist organizations, a state monopoly of the right to use lethal force is essential for the security of citizens and for democratic governance.
Transatlantic Economy 2008 – Center for Transatlantic Relations Study
The Center for Transatlantic Relations [Johns Hopkins University] announced last week that it will soon publish its study on the Transatlantic Economy for 2008. Key points in this study by Daniel Hamilton and Joseph Quinlan are that:
- Nowhere else has invested as much in the US as Europe has. Europe accounts for 75% of all inward investment stock in the US.
- Merger and acquisition inflows from Europe totalled $171 billion between January and September 2007, a 90% increase on the same period in 2006.
- US exports of goods and services to Europe rose by 16.2% in the first half of 2007. In that period, Alabama's exports to Europe jumped by 70%, Delaware's by 50%, Texas's by 32% and New York's by 21.4%.
- US affiliate earnings from Europe have more than doubled since 2001.
- Sales of services in Europe by US owned affiliates are up by 30% from 2000.
- Net US purchases of Spanish securities in 2007 were nearly 40% larger than net US purchases of Brazilian securities.
- US investors put more than four times as much capital into French securities in the first 8 months of 2007, as they did into Indian securities.
- US investment in Ireland last year was double all US investment in South America.
- US FDI in the Netherlands in 2006 was $33 billion, which exceeds US investment in all of developing Asia ($26 billion) and in all its NAFTA partners, (Canada and Mexico) which was $25 billion.
These figures show that we have a huge stake in one another’s success. Europe needs America to succeed, and America needs Europe to succeed.
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