A major new report, just released today by the Stockholm Environment Institute and Friends of the Earth Europe, shows that — despite an increasingly widespread sense that climate catastrophe can no longer be averted — radical action, on the necessary scale, is still a very much within the realm of possibility.
The report — Europe’s Share of the Climate Challenge: Domestic Actions and International Obligations to Protect the Planet — takes a close look at Europe, showing exactly how it can lead the global effort climate change within the necessary planetary limits. The analysis is in terms of Europe’s”two fold obligation,” and shows how it can act, on the one hand, by undertaking domestic actions to rapidly reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and, on the other, by fulfilling its international obligations to help other countries address the twin crises of climate change and development.
More particularly, the report analyzes how Europe can embark on a domestic transition to a low GHG future – enabling it to achieve GHG emissions reductions of 40% by 2020 and close to 90% by 2050 relative to 1990 levels through a combination of radical improvements in energy efficiency, the accelerated retirement of fossil fuels and a dramatic shift toward various types of renewable energy. Next, it assesses Europe’s international obligations for assisting the world’s developing nations make a transition to a low-GHG future by using the GDRs framework as a basis for assessing fair contributions to a global climate effort. This section is really a must read!
For the report, a FOE Europe summary of the results, a slide presentation explaining these results, and even downloadable spreadsheets containing the principle data, see http://www.climateshareeurope.org/
