Europe On Course To Beat Kyoto Objectives
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 12. 2.05
The Kyoto Protocol required of the 15 European Union (EU) countries (at the time, now there are more) to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to 8% below the level they were at in 1990. The EU said yesterday that the emissions of these 15 countries would be 9.3% lower than 1990 levels by 2010. In the meantime, Canada doesn't seem to have much of a plan to reduce emissions except to buy carbon credits and the US isn't doing much, if anything, on the federal level (some state and city initiatives are encouraging).
This optimistic EU forecast can be contrasted with the negative outlook of 2003: After being 2.9% below in 2002, their emissions rose by 1.2% in 2003 and EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas had called these figures "disappointing" at the time. Nice turnaround, guys!
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