Germany vows crackdown after emissions rise
Source: Reuters
By Erik Kirschbaum BERLIN, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Breaking vows to cut greenhouse gas emissions, German industry has actually been pumping more pollution into the atmosphere and will face tougher scrutiny, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Monday. Before flying to the U.N. climate talks in Nairobi, Gabriel said Germany and the European Union have a lot of work to do to meet their 2012 targets to cut CO2 emissions as agreed in the Kyoto Protocol and called for tough sanctions against violators. "We will only keep our credibility if we meet our targets," Gabriel told a news conference, noting developing countries were closely watching whether industrial nations were keeping the promises made in Kyoto to fight climate change. "We can't go asking for a discount," Gabriel said. "The record so far isn't enough." Gabriel said that based on preliminary data, Germany's carbon dioxide emissions actually rose in 2003 and 2004, due to increases in emissions from power plants and industry, even though they had promised to cut those emissions. "That means we will have to tighten the screws even further in the period between 2008 to 2012," said Gabriel, whose country has long fancied itself as a leader in the fight against climate change even though it has recently been eclipsed by Britain. Germany vowed to cut C02 emissions by 21 percent from 1990 to 2012 but it has recently slipped further away from the goal. Much of the German advances toward the target were due to the collapse of Communist East Germany's heavily polluting industry. "We'll have to take tougher measures," Gabriel said. "Despite their requirements to cut CO2 emissions, power plants and the industry actually increased those. Evidently, they exported more power or older power plants were used." Gabriel, a leader in the Social Democrats who share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, also said he saw welcome signals from the United States -- before and after last week's elections. "The political climate in the United States on climate change has improved," he said. "It's interesting that a Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, bucked the (climate) trend and won. Others are now saying 'We have to do more'." Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), produced by burning fossil fuels, trap heat in the atmosphere. Scientists say that if emissions are not curbed, sea levels will rise and drought and floods become more frequent, with dire results. The United States, responsible for one quarter of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions, is the only G8 member not to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. "We're all endangered by climate change -- not just island nations," Gabriel said. "It's a problem for all humanity. We all need to think more long-term than we have, to think about the next 30 years and beyond. The climate protection braking distance is very long."
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