WARSAW (Reuters) - The European Union's aim to lead the world in adopting ambitious emission cuts has failed and the bloc needs a new strategy for global climate talks, a Polish official was quoted on Saturday as saying.
The EU agreed to cut its emissions by 20 percent below the 1990 levels over next 10 years as part of world's efforts to battle climate change, but said insufficient engagement of other key players in the U.N.-led talks prevented it from deepening the cuts to 30 percent.
"The European Union needs a new strategy for the international climate negotiations. So far, we have agreed to everything and tried to make the world act by following our good example. This has not give the desired effect," Poland's Deputy Environment Minister, Bernard Blaszczyk told the Polska Energia magazine in an interview.
Blaszczyk, who is responsible for dealing with the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) from the Polish side, also said the 27-nation bloc was responsible for some 13 percent of global greenhouse gases emissions. "This means efforts by EU alone, without other world's emitters participation, won't let us achieve the strategic goal of curbing global emissions," he also said.
"Now we should wait for the others, the biggest emitters in particular, and focus our actions on the internal market and strengthening Europe's economic competitiveness." Blaszczyk said the EU should at the same time support adaptation in developing states, especially in Africa and Asia, and push hard to improve its own energy effectiveness.
Some scientists expect world temperatures to rise to 3.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century causing catastrophic climate change. The U.N. climate panel said the raise must be limited to 2 degrees to avoid that.
But the global climate summit in December ended with a bare-minimum agreement that missed its original goal of forging a replacement for the climate-protecting Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.
"This means that breaching the security level of 2 degrees is, unfortunately, possible," Blaszczyk also said.
Poland, which is overwhelming reliant on highly-polluting coal for its energy needs, was one of the EU members opposing committing to higher emission cuts.
(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska)
