IMHO, the end of the oil economy is not yet "well underway," but the Europeans, having failed to meet the modest Kyoto targets due to rising oil-fuelled transportation*, are now embracing -- you guessed it -- nuclear power.
O, the people of Europe, if you must choose this path, at least please don't help Washington and Tel Aviv attack the people of Iran for going down the same path.
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1495115.ece>
>From The Times
March 10, 2007
Europe agrees to embrace nuclear option in battle to save the planet
David Charter and Rory Watson, Brussels
The role of nuclear power in Europe received an unexpected boost yesterday as EU leaders hailed a landmark climate change deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and switch to renewable fuels.
Environmentalists complained that an ambitious headline goal to cut Europe's CO emissions by a fifth by 2020 had been weakened by concessions to the main nuclear nations and the biggest polluters in Eastern Europe.
Nonetheless, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, will use the agreement struck at the spring EU summit in Brussels to put pressure on world leaders to follow suit when she hosts the G8 meeting in June.
China, India and Brazil will join that summit and, like the US, be challenged to accept the principle of binding CO cuts for the first time.
As well as agreeing in principle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, EU leaders pledged to ensure that 20 per cent of Europe's energy will come from renewable sources by 2020. The commitment of all 27 member nations is legally enforceable by the European Court of Justice.
Months of haggling will follow as diplomats argue over targets for individual countries. Each will contribute a different amount, and diplomats made clear that less would be expected of the heaviest-polluting former Communist countries. The Czechs and Slovaks had both complained that they had only just left decades of five-year plans behind them.
In a sop to France and the Czech Republic, a country's nuclear power capability will be taken into account when calculating national commitments to renewable energy. France produces 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power stations and insisted that this "noncarbon" source of fuel should be taken into consideration. French diplomats believe this will lessen the EU demand for more renewable sources such as wave, wind and solar power.
Jacques Chirac, the outgoing French President, welcomed the deal as one of the top three achievements of the EU during his 12 years in the Elysée Palace.
Tony Blair was also pleased with the concession towards the nuclear powers. The outcome will give a boost to his plans to rebuild Britain's ageing nuclear power stations which suffered a setback last month when the High Court ruled that the consultation process was seriously flawed. Mr Blair said: "There is then the 20 per cent target on renewable energy. In setting that, there will be permission to look at the energy mix that countries have . . . including nuclear technology, which obviously helps the UK as well."
Environmentalists were less enthusiastic. Friends of the Earth said the targets were timid. A spokesman said: "Heads of States gave a modest boost to the uptake of renewable energies, but agreed that the EU should aim low on cutting greenhouse gases, and failed again to agree any concrete commitment towards reducing Europe's appalling waste of energy."
Mr Blair and Mr Chirac were full of praise for the handling of the summit by Mrs Merkel, who faced strong opposition to her climate change ambitions from several nations, not least in eastern European countries such as Poland, which still rely heavily on fossil fuels.
But she was determined to give herself the best possible leverage on members of the G8 to persuade them to follow suit and prepare a postKyoto global framework for cutting harmful emissions.
President Chirac described the outcome as "one of the great moments of European history". He said: "It was not easy, but Mrs Merkel achieved it with lots of intelligence and brio."
Key to any new global deal will be the United States, where Congress refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol, but also China, India and Brazil, which were all excused Kyoto targets because they were classed as developing nations in the 1990s.
The EU deal allows Mrs Merkel to challenge other global players to match the EU's commitment — with the extra pledge that Europe will go further and cut emissions by up to 30 per cent if others are prepared to follow suit.
* <http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/40541/story.htm> Surging Transport Threatens EU Kyoto Goals - Report NORWAY: February 27, 2007
OSLO - A surge in transport in the European Union is jeopardising goals for cutting greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, the European Environment Agency (EEA) said on Monday.
Emissions from transport, led by a near-doubling in aviation traffic, rose on average by 25 percent across Europe from 1990-2004 even as most EU nations managed to cut emissions from other sectors such as industry or agriculture.
"The environmental performance of the transport sector is still unsatisfactory," the EEA said in a report covering EU nations along with some details of outsiders Turkey, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
"This tendency threatens both Europe's and individual EU member states' progress towards their ... targets" under the U.N. Kyoto Protocol, it said in a 44-page report. "Therefore, additional policy initiatives and instruments are needed."
"Transport -- bottom of the Kyoto class again," it said.
Transport, based mainly on burning oil, accounts for about a fifth of European emissions of heat-trapping gases from human activities. Cars and trucks account for more than 90 percent of transport emissions, ahead of ships, planes and trains.
>From 1990-2003, passenger transport volumes in Europe grew by 20
percent, the EEA said. More people own cars and often drive further,
for instance to out-of-town shopping malls. Air transport alone surged
by 96 percent, aided by cheaper flights.
Under Kyoto, the European Union has to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Emissions were 0.6 percent below 1990 levels in 2004.
FUEL EFFICIENCY
"Technical advances, such as cleaner, more fuel efficient engines are very important but we cannot innovate our way out of the emissions problem from transport," said Jacqueline McGlade, head of the Copenhagen-based EEA.
It said road transport was polluting less but air quality in cities was still above EU limits. One in four EU citizens lives less than 500 metres (yards) from a road carrying more than 3 million vehicles a year, it said.
And transport was creating other problems, such as noise and slicing up landscapes with new roads. The EEA also said Europe spent 270-290 billion euros (US$355.6-$381.9 billion) in transport subsidies a year, some of them environmentally damaging.
The report said greenhouse gas emissions from transport had grown fastest in Luxembourg, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Romania. All had gains exceeding 90 percent from 1990-2004. In the same period, emissions fell only in Lithuania, Bulgaria and Estonia.
Emissions from international flights are now excluded from Kyoto but the EU Commission wants them to be part of an emissions trading scheme. It also wants tighter emissions rules for cars, saying industry goals are insufficient.
The EEA said a 2005 study of the EU projected that road and aviation passenger transport volumes would rise by 36 and 105 percent respectively between 2000 and 2020, by when the Commission wants deeper cuts in overall emissions.
Freight transport was also rising, because more goods were being transported and over longer distances.
Story by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent REUTERS NEWS SERVICE -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>