At their Brussels summit in March the leading politicians of the European Union, including Tony Blair, claimed that they plan to cut carbon emissions by at least 20 per cent from the 1990 levels by 2020.
They also said that the member states will produce a fifth of the EU's energy via renewable sources by the same date, though this is not a binding target.
This is what is known in the environmental movement as "greenwash", putting an environmentally friendly spin on announcements and targets that are never likely to be met.
There is even disagreement over what constitutes renewable energy. Jacques Chirac demanded that nuclear power be considered part of any plan to be agreed. German Chancellor Angela Merkel retorted that nuclear energy was clearly not a renewable energy source.
She did concede that it probably was necessary to consider this as part of the overall strategy to cut carbon emissions. That's how strong their commitment is to an environmentally sustainable future.
Blair has a track record of presenting his administration as environmentally friendly and doing virtually nothing. There are two government targets for reducing Britain's climate changing gases.
The first was set by the Kyoto Protocol. This commits the UK to a 12.5% reduction by 2012. The second is its long-term goal, of a 60% cut in carbon dioxide by 2050. This target will apparently be made legally binding later this year.
The government's own Energy Review found that to show "real progress" towards the 2050 target, by 2020 the UK's greenhouse gas emissions would need to be reduced to between 143-149 million tonnes per year. This means a cut of 29-31% on 1990 levels.
Leading environmentalist George Monbiot commissioned a review of the science for Channel 4. He found that 'instead of a 2931% cut by 2020, it is currently on course to deliver a reduction of between 12% and 17%.
At this rate the UK won't meet its 2020 milestone until 2050. This result suggests that the government's claim to be "leading the world on tackling climate change is simply another product of the Downing Street spin machine. Its carbon-cutting policies are a sham." Absolutely none of the pledges that governments are making on action to prevent can be taken at
face value.
damaging companies.
It's even worse on the other side of the Atlantic. A report leaked to the New York Times says that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will grow almost as much in this decade as they did in the last one. The administration's climate policy will result in emissions growing 11 percent in 2012 from 2002. In the previous decade, emissions grew at a rate of 11.6 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "The report also contains sections describing growing risks to water supplies, coasts and ecosystems around the United States from the anticipated temperature and precipitation changes driven
by the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other heattrapping greenhouse gases." Absolutely none of the pledges that governments are making on action to prevent climate change can be taken at face value. Their public announcements misrepresent the science and the politicians themselves often move onto lucrative jobs with some of the most environmentally
Now is the time for socialists and environmentalists to start working together to create the mass movement that is needed to prevent the accelerating environmental degradation of the planet.