Important year for climate change

Last December, the European Council agreed on a wide-ranging energy and climate change package, which includes a long-term strategy aimed at maintaining a competitive, sustainable and stable environment while addressing the challenges posed by our pressured global system. The package includes specific objectives such as a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas levels by 2020 (as compared to 1990 levels). This reduction target could be further raised to 30 per cent should a comprehensive international agreement be reached in Copenhagen later this year.

The UN Climate Change Conference being held in Copenhagen in December is therefore being seen as a potential turning point in the way we address the climate.

The central objective of the conference is to reach a binding global agreement for the post-2012 period, which marks the end of the remit of the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, most countries are preparing for Copenhagen with a great degree of optimism.

Political will is increasing as more and more leaders are realising that climate change can only be tacked through a strong concerted effort.

The involvement by the US in the climate change discussions over the coming months will be crucial if any agreement is to be reached. America's failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol had sent shockwaves across the international spectrum.

Today, American President Barack Obama has promised that America will be "a leader in developing and implementing a global and coordinated response to climate change".

This declaration is particularly important because Mr Obama has managed to attain a great degree of global respect; if he puts his weight behind a climate change strategy, the possibility that political will and final agreement will be attained suddenly appear much less remote.

Europe can only welcome any eventual international binding agreement.

Within the European People's Party, the challenges posed by global warming and climate change are being framed within the context of an opportunity rather than an insurmountable crisis. By linking what was previously seen as a purely "environmental" concern to its social and economic fabric, climate change is providing good prospects to businesses and enterprises. Take Germany, for example, which has created thousands of jobs and generated billions of euros in turnover through the manufacture and use of environmentally-friendly technology.

Our government is also very aware of the importance of tackling the challenges presented by climate change. The national climate change strategy, issued last week, addresses two very crucial concerns, being the "what," "why," and "how" of a culture change and the fact that climate change is not simply an environmental affair but an economic and social one in equal measure, thus clearly placing our policy discourse on the same frequency of the equivalent European policy direction. These two factors have been discussed and reiterated so often that they risk becoming a cliché in the debate, yet this is probably one of the first occasions that they have been addressed so concretely, being guided as they are by specific methods and targets for implementation.

Our national climate change strategy also rightly targets energy production as the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions in Malta.

If we are to reach the targets we bound ourselves to attain by 2020, we must also implement measures to generate more energy from renewable sources such as the widespread use of solar water heaters in private residences, the installation of photovoltaic solar panels by businesses and a smaller number of households and wind energy on a national scale, as will be the case with the Sikka l-Bajda wind farm. These measures are also particularly crucial since Malta has bound itself to generate at least 10 per cent of its energy from renewable energy resources by 2020.

Many of the 87 recommendations in the national climate change strategy remind me of the MTV Switch and Live Earth Be The Change campaigns. Although they don't carry the stylish appeal of their foreign counterparts, they do attempt to instill in all of us the need of a culture change through measures such as ensuring that 75 per cent of all household and office lighting is energy efficient, as well as the promotion of energy-efficient building construction in general. The strategy also envisages a carpet bombing educational exercise, which will also help secure a different cultural upbringing for children, among other segments of the population.

It is evident that we will have to work together to attain the challenging goals we have placed both on a local and international level, yet our objectives become all the more achievable if we view them as opportunities rather than setbacks.

Mr Casa is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament and sits on the Parliament's temporary committee on climate change

david@davidcasa.eu, www.davidcasa.eu