Ray of the Day: EU victorious in lack of ambitious emissions pledge. Civil Society Awards Fossil To Rich Countries Who Shun Kyoto Commitment.
The EU today won a ‘Ray of the Day’ award for already achieving their unambitious 20% by 2020 emissions reduction target.
The full ceremony speech:
“The Ray of the Day goes to the EU for having already reached their pledged 2020 target almost 10 years ahead of time!(1). They really are the fastest under-achievers in the KP! But wait!? The EU has told us that they are not planning to increase their 2020 emissions pledge from the already achieved 20%. How outrageous! Is the EU really planning to go for the next 10 years without doing ANY further emissions reductions? EU you will need to quickly increase your target or the clouds will appear and it will start raining fossils on your negotiating table.” See the ‘winning’ moment here
Fossils of the day
First Place Fossil was awarded jointly to the USA, Canada, Russia, Japan and New Zealand.Second place was also awarded to New Zealand
Read the full speech to find out why:
Today the First Place Fossil was awarded to USA, Canada, Russia, Japan and New Zealand for running away from a legally binding, multilateral rules based regime. To the USA – seriously, get over your exceptionalism and agree to common accounting rules already. Canada you are exceptional in ways we cannot communicate diplomatically during a fossil presentation, but it is not good – withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol is completely unacceptable and your target is an insult to the most vulnerable. As for Japan, Russia and New Zealand – you still have a chance to support the only legally binding regime and commit to ambitious targets for the second commitment period (and that means no AAU carry over, Russia). We are looking to hearing from you by the end of the week, because really, do we want to be lumped into this low-ambition group?
The Second Place Fossil is awarded to New Zealand. Unlike its neighbor to the west, New Zealand decided not to put its target into the second commitment period, citing spurious grounds when the reality is that it is just a massive display of irresponsibility. It’s island partners in the Pacific should think again before ever trusting NZ again.
The Fossil of the Day awards were first presented at the climate talks in 1999, in Bonn, initiated by the German NGO Forum. During United Nations climate change negotiations (www.unfccc.int), members of the Climate Action Network (CAN), vote for countries judged to have done their ‘best’ to block progress in the negotiations in the talks.
(1) According to the latest projections by the European Environmental Agency the EU’s domestic emissions were 17,5% below the 1990 level in 2011. Factoring in offsets surrendered into the EU ETS in 2011, we find that the EU27 has effectively beaten its -20% climate target for 2020 with nine years to spare!
