The UK, as an EU leader, offered to increase the EU’s emissions reduction to 30%, on condition that other major emitting countries in the developed and developing worlds commit to do their fair share under a global climate agreement. (Or was that agreement to participate in carbon trading schemes?). United Nations negotiations on such an agreement are still ongoing. i.e. there remains no agreement.
In June 2009 the EU climate package became legally binding. This legislation was initially proposed in order to kick start the implementation of the 20-20-20 targets, but the legislation manipulates and directs the intent of the 20-20-20 targets in the four components of the core of the climate package.
EU Nations are now required by law to undertake a revision and strengthening of the Emissions Trading System (ETS), which the EU considers a "key tool for cutting emissions cost-effectively". I have no doubt that the economic climate of recent years has influenced the thrust for carbon trading as an opportunity of commerce. Carbon trading at best allows industrial concern to hide from its pollutant output. Cap and tax (fine) policies do not create adequate disinsentive in a financial climate of national defaults, excessively inflated fuel costs, and the burden of military action related to energy security. The core of the climate package goes on to define an 'Effort Sharing Decision’ governing emissions from sectors not covered by the EU ETS, such as transport, housing, agriculture and waste. The 'decision' is left to each member state to define its emmissions limitation target reflecting the nations 'relative wealth'. This legislation permits emmissions increase for poorer nation states. It seems that the legaslative focus of concern is more with protecting and maintaining industry and economy than it is with protecting the environment.
In the 2010 European Commission publication "Analysis of options to move beyond 20% greenhouse gas emission reductions and assessing the risk of carbon leakage", there is open admitance that the EU action is inadequate. While this 'communication' references the impact of financial collapse, what is most alarming is that it goes on to measure the reduction of emmissions in terms of the costs of carbon trading. Footnote 5, pg 3, of the communication states "These figures represent an additional energy cost, not a reduction of GDP. It includes additional investments needed, as well as energy savings. It does not include air quality benefits". This reflects clearly that the focus is financial and not environmental.
The third core legislation of the climate package creates "Binding national targets for renewable energy which collectively will lift the average renewable share across the EU to 20% by 2020". It is considered that "The targets will contribute to decreasing the EU’s dependence on imported energy and to reducing greenhouse gas emissions." While it is of course commendable to develop conventional renewable technologies, the reality of energy demand and supply renders current renewables as a drop in the ocean to energy usage.
While a lot of noise and gloss speaks of emmissions reduction it remains a fact that energy consumption continues to increase. In the UK, as the north sea gas supply is fast depleting there is an ever increasing demand of dependence on imported energy.
In the global scenario, in order to maintain adequate oil extraction into the future at flow rates that will satisfy estimated demand growth, new oil fields must be found, developed and commissioned at a rate that is untenable. As with economic bail-outs, this projection is simply unsustainable. The same blindness applies to the availability and price of coal. Until 2008, China, the world’s largest coal miner and consumer, burning around 3 billion tons per year (42% of world demand), was a net exporter of coal. In 2010, for the first time in history, it imported 130 million tons of coal from the global ship-borne market.
The Fourth Core legislation of the EU climate package is a legal framework to promote the development and safe use of carbon capture and storage (CCS). This legislation is literaly hiding the problem. That R&D funding will go into a "family of technologies that capture the carbon dioxide emitted by industrial processes and store it in underground geological formations where it cannot contribute to global warming" is simply stupid. This is a very sad reflection of the incapacity of bureaucratic authorities to deal with the extinction level event of industrial pollutants. It is also indicative of the irresponsible steering of resources: "Revised EU guidelines on state aid for environmental protection, issued at the same time as the legislative package was proposed, enable governments to provide financial support for CCS pilot plants". And that is law.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) state as one of it's aims, to "Support global collaboration on energy technology to secure future energy supplies and mitigate their environmental impact, including through improved energy efficiency and development and deployment of low-carbon technologies." The IEA claims on its website to be "The authoritative source of energy analysis and projections".
The 'World Energy Outlook 2010' (WEO) report by the IEA, states that "The energy world faces unprecedented uncertainty". Yet, the impotency of world leadership is reflected in the Copenhagen Accord which is hopelessly inadequate in addressing the reality of polluting energy sourcing and its consequences. This ineffective accord is only proposing funding mitigation and adaptation strategies. Mitigation is not accomplished when the IEA aim is 'low-carbon' while ignoring 'no-carbon' technologies. Mitigation only reduces the symptom of the problem while non-polluting energy sources offer solution. Adaptation amounts to monitoring the process of degradation and desperate actions of management response that can no more than hope for extinction prevention.
The US Global Change Research Association, in its 'National Climate Assessment' states "Because changes in the climate system will continue into the future regardless of emissions mitigation, strategies for protecting climate-sensitive ecosystems through management will be increasingly important", while the 'National Climate Adaptation Summit' of May 2010 had little more focus than pushing for investment in the development of monitoring and modelling technologies. These 'authoratative' reports do not address the catastrophic issues at hand. There is no responsible accountability for the devastation industrialised trade and military security has caused, only the feeble effort to maintain business as usual while attempting to appear to be actingattempting to appear to be acting with environmental integrity.
The World Enery Outlook 2010 (WEO) goes on to state "the speed of the energy transformation that would need to occur after 2020 is such as to raise serious misgivings about the practical achievability of cutting emmissions sufficiently...", but then has no substance to address the shortcomings. The primary strategy proposed being removing subsidies from a failing coal/oil industry. Policy action will not solve the problem particularly in a political environment where a governments pledge is as untrustworthy as an election manifesto statement. The outlook drawn by modelling methods is based upon a data assumption that pledges will be honoured, while actaul data related to Kyoto indicates that pledges are not acted upon. Despite this, the projected forecasts perceive that "Fossil fuels - oil, coal and natural gas - remain the dominant energy sources in 2035". Indicating that there simply isn't the foresight to even see non-polluting and non-depleting new energy sourcing.
Instead of addressing the causal root of the problem, the IEA passes blame to countries not aligned with the globalist 'Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)' for predicted increase in use of (wrongly named) fossil fuels; "In the New Policies Scenario, global demand for each fuel source increases, with fossil fuels accounting over one-half of the increase in total primary energy demand." The viability of 'renewables' in contributing to energy supply is dubious. While it is a good thing that hydro, wind and solar power will be developed to increase supply, they remain incpable of meeting demand to affect the required change. Demand will continue to increase pushing a stressed commercial environment towards bio-mass, geothermal and gas/unconventional oil production. It appears that this is the focus of intent of the OECD, whos stated mission is economic and not environmental. While this becomes the drive of so called 'green economy' in a 'big society', it is recognised in the WEO that the required financial support to deploy bio-mass "typically raises the cost to the economy as a whole". It then continues by justifying the investment in biomass as a profitable energy potential; "But the benefits can be significant too, including reduced imports of oil and reduced CO2 emissions - if biomass is used and the fossil energy used in processing the biomass is not excessive". Again, this is evidently not solution.
There is an abundance of evidence of the viability of new energy sourcing technologies that are non-polluting, from zero point or energy sourced from the vacuum, electro-magnetics and electro-gravitics to cold fusion technologies and more. Many innovations are approaching readiness for application, yet this entire arena of technological advance is ignored by the authorities that hold the purse strings of R&D and make fine statements of environmental policy propaganda.
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