INTERVIEW-EU makes climate change centre of foreign policy
Source: Reuters
By Chris Buckley BEIJING, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Global warming has moved to the heart of European foreign policy, the EU executive's top diplomat said on Thursday, warning of a climate disaster if China and other big greenhouse gas producers are not transformed. External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said her talks in Beijing this week focused on climate change, as well as a new treaty on ties between China and the 27-nation bloc. "Without China, every measure that we set could be offset by the gigantic demands that China has," said of efforts to cut greenhouse gases that experts say heat up the earth's atmosphere, leading to greater extremes of weather and rising sea levels. "This can be really very dangerous for our Earth, and therefore it has become a centrepiece also of external policy," she told Reuters in an interview. Her campaign to draw China into confronting global warming is the latest in a string of initiatives suggesting that the issue is escalating from an environmental concern to a focus of global security. On Monday, a summit of Asian leaders promised to encourage more efficient energy use to help stave off global warming. In his State of the Union speech next week, U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to promise action on climate change while rejecting compulsory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. "We need to act because we see that more and more natural catastrophes are coming," said Ferrero-Waldner. China, the world's fourth-largest economy and its second-biggest energy user, has set a goal to cut energy consumption per unit of national income by 20 percent by 2010. But with coal-fired stations providing over 80 percent of China's electricity, it is on course to overtake the United States by the end of the decade as the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activity that is warming the planet. The EU last week offered to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent, if other developed countries similarly cut the man-made gases responsible for trapping heat in the atmosphere. Ferrero-Waldner said Brussels wanted to help China rein in its emissions of carbon dioxide by offering clean coal and power plant technology. China was taking global warming seriously, she said, but added that she did not press Beijing to accept the mandatory caps on emissions that Europe accepts under the Kyoto Protocol. "For the moment, we are not going that far. We understand China regards herself as a developing country," she said. GREATER OPENNESS Ferrero-Waldner said she also saw growing concern about climate change in Washington, where the Bush administration has long raised doubts about the scientific credibility of global warming and resisted limits on greenhouse gas emissions. "We see a greater openness of the U.S. administration to speak about this question," she said. Ferrero-Waldner said she would also discuss climate change when she travels to India next month. A U.N. panel on climate change is expected to present mounting evidence that human activity is dangerously heating the Earth when it presents its latest report next month. Ferrero-Waldner said China and the EU would also open up a dialogue on energy security. The turmoil in Europe sparked by last year's dispute between Russia and Ukraine over gas supplies was a "wake-up call" to treat energy security as a "strategic question", she said. On Wednesday, Ferrero-Waldner and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing launched talks aimed at forging a sweeping new treaty to map out ties between the EU and China. Li also pressed Brussels to lift an embargo on arms sales to China imposed in 1989 after Beijing's bloody military crackdown on pro-reform demonstrators. But Ferrero-Waldner said China first had to improve citizens' rights, including ratifying a U.N. covenant on civil and political rights and releasing political prisoners jailed after the 1989 protests.
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