The US claims leadership in the climate fight, but the EU is still ahead

The United States has returned to the international climate fight after four years in which it was absent from any commitment due to Republican Donald Trump. U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, pledged this week to 40 world leaders to reduce his country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52% by 2030 from 2005 levels. This promise, applauded by his colleagues and by the UN, leaves a question in the air: has the US advanced the European Union in ambition against climate change? Although the comparisons have to be qualified a lot, the answer is, in principle, no: the European emissions reduction target is harder than the one announced on Thursday by Biden if it is based on 1990, the year that the UN has been using as a reference for decades. In addition, the EU has a large body of legislation and measures that have been maintained over time that help the decarbonization of the community economy and that will end up shielded this year in the first European climate law. The objective to which the EU has committed itself before the United Nations is to reduce its emissions by 55% by 2030, but compared to 1990.

Apart from comparisons, the step taken by Biden aims to place his country at the center of the great global transformation that will mean the decarbonization of the world economy, which must lead to the abandonment of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal), main responsible for greenhouse gases. The climate fight is “a moral obligation,” Biden said Thursday, but also an “economic” obligation. Or, as John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy for climate, explained during the summit, “it’s the biggest opportunity since the Industrial Revolution.” And the attitude of Trump, who wanted to bet on coal, hydrocarbon prospecting and preventing the development of less polluting cars, took the United States out of the race towards a transition that did not stop in the world despite the Republican.

In this industrial and technological race is the European Union, which has been betting for years to accelerate the transition to the low-carbon economy. The fight against climate change has become, in fact, one of the most important identity features in Europe. And the intention of the European Commission and the 27 is to boost it even more with the multimillion-dollar recovery plan approved by the EU institutions. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, recalled this week at the summit that 37% of the funds should go to actions related to climate change. “From crises we either come out better or we come out worse,” Pope Francis summed up the post-pandemic dilemma in which humanity finds itself. The Pope bet in his speech at the summit on the need for a green recovery.

Point of comparison

To compare the objectives promised to the UN by the United States and the European Union, the first thing to look at is the point from which each one starts. Europe reached its peak of emissions in 1990 and from there it has been reducing them in a sustained way, thus complying with the provisions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, of 1992, and from which emanate the Kyoto Protocol and the current Paris Agreement. However, the U.S. did not reach its emissions ceiling until 2007.

Therefore, when comparing the commitments of both powers taking 1990 as a starting point, the result is that the EU will reduce its emissions by 55% by 2030, while the US cut would be just over 40%. Another benchmark that can be taken is 2010. The UN has urged all countries that, by the end of this decade, global emissions will have been reduced by 45% compared to 2010. That is the way to try to keep the average temperature from exceeding 1.5 degrees of warming this century, according to the Paris Agreement. If 2010 is taken as a benchmark, the EU’s commitment translates into a 48% cut in emissions by 2030 and that of the United States by 44.8%.

To this we must add another factor: the dependence that each economy has on fossil fuels. Although China is the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases, if you look at it in gross terms, the United States is still far ahead of The Asian country when looking at per capita emissions. The same goes for the EU: a European emits on average 2.5 times less carbon dioxide than an American.

Although the European Union is presenting ambitious targets – not enough in any case, according to environmental organizations and green parties – it is the United Kingdom that is showing greater international leadership among the great powers. It has committed to reducing its emissions by 68% by 2030 compared to 1990 (58% compared to 2010). And Spain? The objective set out in the climate change law is to cut emissions by 23% by the end of the decade compared to 1990 (38% compared to 2010). Spain did not reach its peak emissions until 2007 and during the last decade they barely fell due to a mixture of economic reasons and lack of climate measures. In the face of criticism for a lack of ambition, the government has pledged to revise its target upwards in 2023.

Net, gross and the fine print

Another factor that must be taken into account when analyzing the commitments that are put on the table – all the signatories of the Paris Agreement must present plans to cut emissions, although each government decides its objective – whether to talk about net or gross emissions. Both the European Union and the United States — but not the United Kingdom and Spain — speak out in their net emissions reduction programs. This opens the door to offsets through carbon dioxide sinks, such as forests or other still uncertain technological solutions.

Many environmental groups, activists and experts call the inclusion of the concept of net emissions accounting tricks. But the truth is that both the Paris Agreement and the reports of the IPCC, the group of scientists that advises the UN on climate change issues, point towards that neutrality when they talk about emission reductions.

Europe’s promised 55% reduction in net emissions becomes 52.8% when switched to gross emissions, according to environmental groups. In order for there to be a real reduction in emissions, the European partners have decided this week to put a cap on the gases that can be compensated with sinks in 2030: 225 million tons of CO₂ equivalent (the unit used with greenhouse gases); in 2019 the 27 emitted 3.6 billion tons of gases in total.

What the UNITED States will do now on this matter is anyone’s guess. The plan it has presented to the United Nations with its new goals emphasizes forests, agricultural soils and oceans as sinks. But the U.S. government must now develop its domestic programs and realize all the measures it proposes to make up for lost time in the fight against climate change.

Source: The Country