Economic Crisis A Hurdle In Climate Change Treaty Negotiations

Lack of credit supply in world markets, high unemployment rates and plummeting economic growth rates are keeping nations from taking bold measures to protect the environment, noted the Swedish environment minister Andreas Carlgren.

Countries around the world are worried that financially intensive schemes to protect environment could take away the much needed financial resources from the core and growth driving sectors of their economies. Putting restrictions on manufacturing and public utilities could not only slow down any economic recovery but also put extra burden on the common people who are already facing problems of reduced incomes and lost jobs. 

European Union has been the most aggressive in setting ambitious renewable energy and emission reduction goals but some of its own members are in poor economic state to commit to any kind of emission targets. Poland has made it clear that it will not give up its right to use indigenous coal reserves in order to power its economic growth.

Europe Plans $200 Billion Climate Tax on Developed Nations

With eyes on the Copenhagen talks for discussion on the next climate policy, the European Union plans to propose a tax on the carbon emissions of the developed nations, a move which could generate more than $200 billion by 2020. These funds will be used in helping developing and poor nations move from fossils fuels based energy systems to those based on renewable sources.

The European Union proposes that carbon offsetting through the trade of carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism be phased out and replaced by a scheme under which the developed nations would commit to cut their but would also pay taxes for extra emissions. The proposal also calls for a similar scheme for the ‘advanced developing nations’ like India and China but fails to clarify its nature.

Carbon offsetting cannot be pursued as a long term solution to mitigate the global carbon emissions and thus the Clean Development Mechanism should be seen only as a transformational step and not the solution to the problem. Replacing carbon offsetting with binding emission reductions seems to be the obvious next step but one has to ask if the world can afford a climate tax at this time of economic meltdown.

Japan, South Korea Plan Green Economic Stimulus Packages

Japan and South Korea have announced that their governments will be investing billions of dollars to develop new green projects which would help creating new jobs and hopefully bring their battered economies back on track.

Continuing the global trend, the Asian industrial powers announced ambitious plans to tackle the rising carbon emissions, depleting energy resources and sliding economic growth. South Korea plans to invest $38 billion in the next four years to create almost a million new jobs. The new investments will be made in projects aimed at recycling waste, increasing energy efficiency, forest conservation and developing renewable energy resources.

Japan, too, has unveiled plans to expand its $745 billion green business sector to $1 trillion by 2020 thus creating about 800,000 new jobs. Japan, although, a huge producer of green technologies has been facing economic downturn primarily because of falling exports, now the government wants to create a market for these green technologies at home.