Hughes Belin, leading environment journalist at viEUws.eu, is joined by Marcin Korolec, Polish Secretary of State for Climate to discuss the outcome of the COP19 negotiations – the 19th Conference of Partners of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – in Warsaw and theEuropean Union’s perspective on tackling climate change.
Poland’s Secretary of State for Climate is also the president of the UN climate talks until the next COP talks will be held in Lima in late 2014. He claims that the biggest achievements of the COP talks were the road map to the COP21 conference in Paris (December 2015) andcommitments from all parties, not just a certain group of countries, to present their contributions. Regarding the EU’s 2030 climate and energy package, Korolec shows little optimism for the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). “We see a number of challenges the ETS is facing in Europe and I am not particularly enthusiastic about this instrument”, claims Korolec.
Moreover, he argues that the European Union cannot go ahead without other countries since Europe’s emissions represent only 11% of the total global emissions. Korolec notes that ”without others, European enthusiasm does not make sense”. Europe needs a strong policy but we need to act together”. Hence, the Secretary of State believes that European climate policy must be conditional to the progress in international climate negotiations.
“Europe needs to adjust its climate policy”, claims Polish Climate Secretary of State appeared first on viEUws.