A third way for the environment
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Climate change
'Above all," Talleyrand warned his supporters, "not too much zeal." In the struggle to achieve a low-carbon future and combat climate change it is time for his advice to be heeded by the European Union Commission, as well as by a variety of member-state leaders cheering on its efforts.
In recent months a torrent of directives, initiatives and mandatory targets to cut carbon emissions has poured from the Commission. The list includes the world's toughest limits on car emissions, a big boost for biofuels and a doubling of the 2020 target for the percentage of renewables (wind, solar power, hydro, etc.) in Europe's energy supplies.
Still more proposals — for raising energy efficiency standards sharply on consumer products and curbing aviation emissions — are in the pipeline.
This almost feverish new momentum is admirable but dangerous. Rather than inspiring European business and the general public, it is making both constituencies thoroughly uneasy.
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Industry is opposed because the proposals could raise costs and cut competitiveness. The consuming public, already hit by much higher energy and fuel prices, sees them rising still further.
Once again, the biggest danger is of division between EU members states, with Tony Blair in Britain and Angela Merkel in Germany radiating enthusiasm for the Commission's proposals while other countries, like Poland and the Czech Republic, sounding distinctly hostile. Twelve member states are said to be opposed to the new targets.
The outcome is that battle lines are being drawn between apparently conflicting views and goals: energy security on one side — plentiful, reliable, affordable energy supplies, which everyone wants; and a decarbonized, greener, cleaner future on the other side, which everyone also wants. This clash is totally unnecessary and completely avoidable. The two causes should reinforce each other instead of being left to quarrel.
Of course, at the extremes there will always be zealots. At one pole there will always be evangelical carbon-crusaders who want to end cheap air travel, cut back driving, forbid or charge for almost anything that produces a carbon footprint and phase out all fossil fuels. At the other pole there will always be those who question the whole climate debate and the science behind it.
In between are the rest of us, who want reliable, reasonably cheap energy both to heat and light our homes and to meet the needs of the developing countries, yet who also want a world in which coastal cities remain above sea-level, the air is pure, rivers stay fresh, wildlife is protected and forests flourish.
If the goal is a low-carbon global future, then putting too much front-end emphasis on longer-term climate concerns and on questionable targets and complex plans for rationing and allocating carbon permits — and hoping that other continents, with far greater emissions, will follow suit — may not be the way to get where we want.
That route could lead not to climate security but to unseemly dogfights between interests, lobbies and EU member states of just the kind that seem to be emerging already.
Instead, it ought to be possible to turn a conflict into an alliance. Ways should be found of combining the urgent needs for energy security in Europe, as well as the urgent needs of the poorer world, with a fully effective long-run campaign against global warming.
Harnessing these two causes — energy security and climate security — would be to create a grand unity of purpose, which is visibly lacking at present.
If the EU's policy makers were to ease up in their zeal for new costs, taxes and permits — if instead they were to make their first priority reducing Europe's overdependence on imported oil and Russian gas, combined with maximum encouragement to energy- saving technologies, research and product development — they might get a pleasant surprise.
Instead of mounting hostility they might find both business and the consuming public eager to cut their energy bills and move on to cleaner, greener and less costly ways of living and working, and they might find that they were already on the high road to lower carbon and a calmer planet.
It would be folly to let yet another rift open up in Europe between near-term energy worries and longer-term green concerns. Member states are bound to have divergent energy priorities and interests, but on these issues wise EU leadership should show them how they can march forward together.
Lord Howell is a former British secretary of state for energy and Carole Nakhle is energy research fellow at the Surrey Energy Economics Centre, University of Surrey. Their book, "Out of the Energy Labyrinth," will be published in May.
