EU nations ‘lock horns’ over car, van CO2 curbs
‘Ingenuity & tech’ key: Gore
LUXEMBOURG, Oct 9, (Agencies): European Union environment ministers will seek a compromise on Tuesday over how tough to be on curbing carbon dioxide emissions from cars and vans, with Germany warning too tough targets could harm industry and cost jobs.
In a clash between concerns over the environmental risk of emissions and industry competitiveness, EU governments are divided over what 2030 limits to impose on Europe’s powerful carmakers.
Germany, with its big auto sector, has backed the EU executive proposing a 30 percent reduction by 2030, compared to 2021 levels.
“After the IPCC report yesterday that is not easy. But it is a position we all agreed on,” German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze told reporters on her way to the meeting in Luxembourg.
The meeting comes a day after the release of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which warned that societies would have to make “unprecedented” changes to meet a lower global warming target.
France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg are among countries pushing for a stricter limit of 40 percent, in line with climate targets backed by EU lawmakers last week.
“Everyone is calling for action after the report from climate experts, and we now have a chance to find an agreement that is the most dynamic possible, the most ambitious possible,” said French Minister for the Environment, Francois de Rugy.
EU regulators have been galvanized into setting tougher rules by Volkswagen’s admission in 2015 that it had masked exhaust emissions using software in as many as 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide.
Ingeniuty, tech key – Gore:
It is not too late for countries to tackle global warming, former US vicepresident Al Gore said on Tuesday, a day after the United Nations warned that the world was battling against time to contain rising temperatures.
Gore, who won an Oscar and shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, said “ingenuity and technology” were key to capping the emissions that cause global warming.
“Are we doomed to destroy ourselves? I refuse to believe that,” Gore said at an event in Delhi, the capital of India, which is the third biggest polluter in the world.
“We have limitations ... but we also have the ability to transcend those limitations. Perhaps never with the speed necessary as now, as the IPCC alerted us again yesterday. But we do have the capacity.”
To accelerate change, he said countries must overcome paralysis on curbing emissions, otherwise “we are headed toward 3- to 4 degree Celsius increase, which is associated with such utter catastrophes”.
Diesel ban on major Berlin roads:
Diesel drivers in Berlin faced the prospect of bans from major arterial roads as a court Tuesday ordered the German capital must follow in the footsteps of Hamburg, Frankfurt and Stuttgart with exclusion zones.
A renewed focus on air quality in the wake of Volkswagen’s 2015 “dieselgate” scandal – in which the car giant admitted to cheating regulatory tests on 11 million cars worldwide – has seen a wave of courtroom action across Germany.
“The current clean air plan does not include sufficient measures to meet annual limits for nitrogen dioxide (NO2),” the Berlin judges said.
To bring down levels of the harmful pollutant, city authorities “must order a driving ban for the streets where the threshold is not met,” targeting vehicles up to the Euro 5 emissions standard.
Definite exclusion zones include 11 stretches of major arteries like the north-south axis Friedrichstrasse and the east-west Leipziger Strasse.
Meanwhile, the city-state’s government must also examine whether driving bans are needed to bring down NO2 levels on a further 15 kilometres (nine miles) of road in 117 different sections – a tiny fraction of Berlin’s total 5,343 kilometres of streets.
Drink cos top makers of plastic waste:
Drink companies Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestle were found to be the world’s biggest producers of plastic trash, a report by environmental group Greenpeace said on Tuesday.
Working with the Break Free From Plastic movement, Greenpeace said it orchestrated 239 plastic clean-ups in 42 countries around the world, which resulted in the audit of 187,000 pieces of plastic trash. The aim was to get a picture of how large corporations contribute to the problem of pollution.
Coca-Cola, the world’s largest soft drink maker, was the top waste producer, Greenpeace said, with Coke-branded plastic trash found in 40 of the 42 countries.
“These brand audits offer undeniable proof of the role that corporations play in perpetuating the global plastic pollution crisis,” said Von Hernandez, global coordinator for Break Free From Plastic.
Overall, the most common type of plastic found was polystyrene, which goes into packaging and foam coffee cups, followed closely by PET, used in bottles and containers.
Dutch lose greenhouse gas appeal:
The Dutch government on Tuesday lost a legal appeal against a landmark court ruling which ordered it to slash greenhouse gases by at least 25 percent by 2020.
The Hague appeals court upheld a 2015 court victory by environmental rights group Urgenda, which sought to force a national reduction of emissions blamed for global warming.
“The state is acting unlawfully and in violation of the duty of care,” the ruling said, according to the Dutch news agency ANP.
The government had argued that “because the court made a policy and political choice” it had overreached its powers.
The low-lying Netherlands is particularly vulnerable to sea level rises caused by climate change.
Urgenda hailed the decision, saying on Twitter: “The judge made mincemeat out of the state’s appeal. A 25 percent drop by 2020 is only the minimum! The government needs to work!”.
The group brought the case in April 2015 on behalf of some 900 Dutch citizens.