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The World from Berlin

'Global Warming Pays No Attention to the Economy'

In a season of talks on global warming, and in a climate of economic disasater, Merkel has eased away from a few of her greener commitments. Meanwhile Obama has yet to show his hand on the climate -- or, in fact, take office. What's a world community to do?

The timing is all wrong. For years, the world has known that a new agreement will have to be negotiated to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. But now that negotations have started in earnest in Poznan, Poland this week, little progress is being made.

On the one hand, a global recession has eaten significantly into anti-global warming zeal among the 129 nations with representatives at the United Nations-sponsored meeting.

On the other hand, the United States -- the world's biggest per capita polluter -- is essentially absent. President-elect Barack Obama's transition team hasn't sent representatives to Poland because Obama hasn't yet been inaugurated. And the outgoing Bush administration is hardly in a position set policy for the US.

"It has affected the meeting in a fairly significant way," policy expert Gus Silva-Chavez, from the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, told the New York Times. "A lot of people think: 'This is not the time to put our cards on the table. Let's wait for the new administration. Why agree to anything now?'"

One of the first world leaders to test Obama's commitment to climate change has been Angela Merkel, who was making climate-friendly noises of her own until the economy went sour. This week she told the tabloid Bild that she wouldn't agree to any EU regulations "that endanger jobs or investments in Germany."

With an EU summit in Brussels also underway this week -- where other European leaders are disappointed by Merkel's weakened commitment to climate protection -- German editorial pages have broken out in a rash of differing opinion. Some commentators think Merkel is right to prevent high-polluting German industries from moving further east, where environmental rules aren't so strict. Others see climate change as an economic opportunity.

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"'Yes to the climate, no to coal!' yelled protesters who followed German and Polish delegations this week from the Poznan conference to a German-Polish government conference in Warsaw … As if eastern EU member states had no other worries besides the climate! Nevertheless, Poland has done a lot to reduce the effects of its ruthless old socialist industries over the past 15 years. Industrial production has doubled in this period of time, while emissions have sunk by a third. Of course the modernization of Poland's aged power plants will take longer."

"Since the financial crisis caught her by surprise, Angela Merkel has shown more understanding for nations who would have their energy supply strangled by a rush to introduce emissions-trading schemes. This will have a positive effect on the climate between leaders in Warsaw and Berlin."

British Ambassador to Germany Sir Michael Arthur argues in the financial daily Handelsblatt:

"The shifting of carbon emissions out of the EU to other nations with lower environmental standards is a real problem. The best solution is a new international climate-change agreement."

"Of course it will be difficult for any nation to move to a low-emission economy. Some industrial branches have already lost jobs. But new jobs are also being created in emerging industries. The global market for environmental technology already has a volume of $700 billion, and by 2010 green businesses, taken together, will be a larger worldwide bloc than the airline industry or pharmaceuticals."

"The potential for economic growth in climate protection is enormous. Europe and Germany in particular have every chance to profit from it. German firms are world leaders in wind and solar technologies. The number of people working on renewable energies is estimated at 215,000."

"One thing is clear: Global warming pays no attention to the economy … It will be cheaper to commit to measures now than to do nothing and face a battle against the most drastic effects of climate change."

The conservative daily Die Welt argues with an EU initiative on light bulbs:

"In May 2008 the vice president of the EU Commission, Günter Verheugen, warned that the EU might become an ecological dictatorship. Two months later the EU Commission suggested a ban on conventional light bulbs. It's now no longer a matter of debate whether the light bulb should disappear; the only question is when."

"If you live, you harm the environment. Since the '70s there has been an ironic saying: Save the planet: Kill yourself. The EU and its regulations can't go that far, which is the reason it keeps passing new regulations that reach deeper and deeper into private habits … The EU is in the business of containing damage (to the environment), but in the process it will throw personal freedom overboard."

-- Michael Scott Moore; 12:30 CET