Editorial

By a coincidence of timing, climate change was high on the agenda last week, both in Brussels where European Union leaders met for a summit at the end of the French Presidency, and in Poznan, in Poland, where a UN climate conference took place - the last before the crucial UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next year.

Just over 20 months ago, the EU promised to take a leading role on climate change. EU leaders signed up to binding promises, known as 20/20/20. By the year 2020, they would cut Europe's carbon emissions by at least 20 per cent over 1990 levels, obtain 20 per cent of all energy from renewable energy sources and make energy efficiency savings of 20 per cent. Although Malta's emissions are small in total - though disturbingly on the increase - we have also committed ourselves to meeting these targets.

A final plan for the EU to deliver on these promises had to be finalised at the summit. When the ambitious commitment to the 20/20/20 pledges was made in March 2007, however, Europe was enjoying an economic upturn. Growth forecasts were positive. European recession seemed unlikely, if not impossible. The possibility of world economic meltdown was unthinkable.

Today Europe and the world are in the midst of a severe economic downturn. And global climate, too, has taken a turn for the worse. Sea ice in the Arctic is melting more rapidly than climate models had predicted. There is evidence of warming in Antarctica, until now the only continent where temperatures had remained stable.

Thus, EU leaders faced two pressing problems: the economic woes of a mounting recession, as well as the spectre of global warming. The temptation for politicians in Brussels to avoid tackling climate change for "just another short while" - to postpone taking the tough decisions which they know have to be taken to deal with the looming energy and climate crises - was predictable, if likely to be short-sighted.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who piloted the summit in March 2007 which championed 20/20/20, and who faces an impending election, sounded like a lobbyist for German industries that must be shielded from the full costs of this pledge. Italy considered this was not the time to introduce such demanding targets. Poland, which was hosting the UN climate conference in Poznan, was deeply reluctant to comply since it gets almost all its electricity from coal - a fuel source which under the EU's emissions trading scheme will be heavily penalised. Britain is gloomy about meeting its renewable energy targets. Other nations had similar concerns.

Like St Augustine who asked for chastity "but not yet", EU leaders, who only a year ago were persuaded of the impending disaster of global warming if timely steps to mitigate its effects were not taken, now found themselves weakening in their earlier resolve. In the final outcome there are signs that a classic EU fudge came out of the summit - one which combined adherence to the 20/20/20 package with concessions to limit its impact on struggling industries. These included concessions to Malta whose performance in this field to date is already lamentable.

For the sake of all of us let us hope that the EU's concessions do not serve to undermine the vital world agreement which must be reached in Copenhagen next year.