The United States Mission
to the European Union

Mr. Huddleston: Hello, everyone. Good evening. Welcome to our debate, “The climate is changing: are you?”

My name is Thomas Huddleston. I’m the Vice President of CafeBabel.com, the Brussels team.

Just to give you a bit of information about who we are, CafeBabel.com is a European magazine on line, based on participatory journalism. Basically a few years ago there were a bunch of Erasmus students who went back to their home countries and were shocked at the low quality of European news so they put together a network of young journalists, young translators, and you now have a regular magazine which is translated into seven languages -- English, French, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, German and Polish -- so that you can read an article about the latest play in Warsaw written by a Catalan, and you can read it in French.

Here in Brussels we organize monthly debates called the Menican Babel Debates here in Brussels cafes where we try and bring together decisionmakers in Europe, in Belgium, with you for very open, participatory debates. So we’re looking forward to some hot debates on this hot topic.

Again, my name is Thomas Huddleston. Welcome.

So the debate tonight is on, “The climate is changing: are you?” Basically we see climate changes everywhere now. It’s on the TV, it’s in the newspapers, you even see it in fashion ads. So it seems like everyone is kind of waking up to the need for kind of a global response. Many different actors are starting to take responsibility. But the question is, are our governments willing to take the necessary and very urgent steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? And more importantly, are we willing to change the way that we lead our lives, even radically? As a larger question, can we make cutting our greenhouse gas emissions something “hip and sexy” in the words of California Governor and former Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So that will be the debate, the general topic for this evening.

Ms. ______: Let’s introduce the speakers.

We have on our left Mr. Jos Delbeke who is Director, The European Commission, DG Environment, where he is specifically on climate change and air issues.

We have Mrs. Witherspoon in the middle who comes straight from California to visit us tonight. She was a former executive officer of the California Air Resource Board. We are very happy to have her with us tonight.

On the very left we have Mr. Matthias Duwe who is Director of the Climate Action Network, the European Office.

Mr. Huddleston: Florence, would you like to talk a bit about the format of the debate?

Ms. ______: Just to explain to you, the debate will be structured in two parts. The first part which will focus on the EU versus US situation. We’ll have a comparison with two presentations. One presentation of seven minutes from Mr. Delbeke and seven minutes presentation by Mrs. Witherspoon. And you have after each presentation, you will be able to ask as many questions as you wish for about 15 minutes after each presentation. Then we’ll have a break, 20 minute break, so that you can enjoy our great special cocktail for this evening. How do you call it?

Mr. Huddleston: We had lots of suggestions. The Global Warmer, Katrina, many things also in bad taste, so don’t worry. But we’ve settled on the Cocktail Climatique. So don’t hesitate to grab a Cocktail Climatique.

Ms. ______: After this great break we’ll come back and we’ll have an introduction by Mr. Duwe, seven minutes, and then the floor will be yours.

Mr. Huddleston: We have Rul here who has the minute sign, so he’ll be keeping everyone on a tight schedule. Also feel free to ask your questions in French or Dutch. We have French and Dutch speakers who can translate the questions and the responses.

First, to Ms. Witherspoon, by way of background according to our CafeBabel.com research team, Graciella, California is the sixth largest economy in the world and responsible for 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Does that sound about right?

Mrs. Witherspoon: That sounds about right.

Mr. Huddleston: Also California is known for taking a great initiative on issues of climate change. So the question is, does California deserve its good reputation? If so, what have been the key factors that have made California leading? Is it political will? Is it the charisma of the Governor? Is it a history of working on environmental issues or a history of having terrible air pollution? So what are those key factors? Then where do you think Europe might be able to learn from California’s experience?

Mrs. Witherspoon: Good evening, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m getting over a cold, so my voice might crack occasionally, but I’ll try to speak as clearly as I can.

California since the ‘50s and ‘60s has done strong environmental regulation out of self interest. California had and still has the worst air pollution in the United States. California is who figured out what causes ozone to form in the atmosphere and that it’s not just burning trash in the back yard, but a complex interaction of car emissions and other pollutants. So California has led the United States all that time in environmental regulation and then did the same for water, for toxics control, et cetera. So this is really a continuation of California’s own self interest leading it.

We are immediately affected by climate change. We took national and international data and boiled it down to the California Effects. The most serious for us is a loss of our fresh water which falls as snow in the northern Sierras. So 75 percent of our fresh water is at risk at different warming estimates.

We’re also a large agricultural state. We supply one-fifth of the milk and cheese to the United States, and cows under stress make less milk when they get hot and they might not even be able to live in California.

Our wine industry, if you’ve ever had California wine, grape quality declines when the heat goes up. We also grow apples and almonds and they need cold hours to set on the tree without falling off. So these and many other effects.

When the sea levels rise, we move water from the north to the south of our state through a system of aqueducts and rivers, and the salt water penetrates into the delta destroying that ecosystem and also making our water salty.

So we presented all these facts to our politicians so that they could understand it in direct terms. But really the turning point I think for everyone in the United States was Al Gore’s movie, turning what had been known for 30 years into common, simple language and pictures. Then making it imperative for people who call themselves environmental leaders to step out.

I’ll stop there and you can add to your question.

Mr. Huddleston: To add to the question I guess I would ask what kind of impact California has had in the US, because I think I have a quote which is Arnold Schwarzenegger was interviewed by the BBC and he said, I won’t try and do an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation, but you can imagine it’s really easy with this quote: “California is big, it’s powerful. What we do in California has unbelievable impact and it has consequences.”

So do you think it has had consequences on how the federal level is looking at it, or on other action across different states? And do you think it could have an action here in Europe? I know that the US Mission has been bringing you -- you were in Helsinki, you were in Stavanger in Norway. Do you think it can carry something here to Europe as well?

Mrs. Witherspoon: I do. California is the tenth largest economy in the world and we like to think of ourselves almost as a nation more than a state. Business looks at California as a haranguer, an omen of what’s going to come and affect them elsewhere in the country.

But something you should understand about the United States is domestic policy is not set in Washington. It’s defined in the states. When enough states have acted and we have critical mass, we have a de facto national standard. Then Congress just turns that into the law. We try to use that leverage. In the past California, Texas and New York joined together to change the truck standards in the US because we controlled 30 percent of the market. Once the three of us said this is what it’s going to be, the truck companies had nowhere to go. They had to meet our standard which became the national standard.

The other thing that happens is that business doesn’t like different regulations. You’ve heard that in the EU -- 27 different countries, 27 different regulations. So they rushed to Washington and said please, one standard. So we set all of that creative energy in motion.

Also we birth new industries. We think green technology is going to be a growth driver for us. Exports are 25 percent of our $1.5 trillion economy, so that’s the new growth sector for us.

We can teach Europe how to regulate, and they can teach us how to play well with others because we don’t do that in the United States very well, and even California doesn’t do it very well. We just charge. If you follow us, that’s okay, and if you don’t, too bad. But that’s not going to work for climate change.

Mr. Huddleston: One follow-up question just briefly. You talked a lot about business. Do you think that California has something to teach on the way that it interacts with business? I think perhaps in Europe it might be a little bit different. Would you say that business is kind of friendly to these initiatives? Are they always happy to run with whatever California then proposes?

Mrs. Witherspoon: Okay, now I’m going to say the controversial thing that we can talk about for the rest of the evening. I think every country, every state in the world is in the grip of the power of energy companies and that it takes equal power to modify what’s easy to do, what creates economic growth, what creates national security. So the people have to rise up and demand something different. That’s what really will make the difference going forward on climate change is when the citizens demand more than even government bureaucrats can dream up as the right way to proceed.

Mr. Huddleston: Does anyone in the audience have questions about what’s going on in California or how that might have an impact on even what’s going on in the US?

Question: I had a question basically about what you just said about California is setting standards for trucks and then if you have a certain critical mass the rest of the US will follow.

What do you exactly mean with that? I think one of the problems we have in let’s say the European Union, if one country has a certain idea and it wants to impose certain standards, especially when you come to emissions, it cannot just say okay, we have a standard because we have also certain regulations about free movement and internal market.

So if you say this for the US, does it mean that you block let’s say trucks coming from other states to enter into California? How does this work exactly?

Mrs. Witherspoon: We have the same legal constraints. It’s called the Interstate Commerce Clause. We get sued all the time that we violated it. We’re more successful -- You have to treat the trucks from other states the same way that you treat the trucks in your own state, and you have to have a compelling purpose to protect your citizens that can be recognized in a court of law. So we meet that test for cars, for paint, for MTV and gasoline, for particulate filters on trucks. We have not yet been able to meet it on locomotives, on marine vessels, on aircraft. So in these areas we need national and international action because California can’t do it by itself.

Mr. Huddleston: Who else has a question about what’s going on in California, whether that has an impact on what the US is doing in the US or internationally?

Question: We often criticize the US for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. What is the stand of California towards it?

Mrs. Witherspoon: We’re past the Kyoto Protocol now, so it’s all about post-2012 negotiations. But it was a tragedy when Al Gore was at the Kyoto Convention and negotiated its provisions and came home and the US Senate wouldn’t ratify it. There were 100 reasons not to and only one to do it, which was, well two, which was the Vice President and President thought it was a good idea and the scientists thought it was important but the US people weren’t prepared and the US politicians weren’t prepared. We’re still in that stage of gathering critical mass so that the US can act.

Nothing is going to happen this year. The meeting in Washington’s not going to produce any change. We need a new President. Whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat, we need a fresh piece of paper. I think we also need some more accidents and catastrophes to hit Americans up the side of the head so that they also feel threatened. It’s not just poor people in Louisiana, it’s them. All over the country, it’s them.

Mr. Huddleston: Can I ask a question about accidents? I’m a little skeptical about that. I mean haven’t we had our fair share of climate-related catastrophes like Katrina? I think that in the US people are very willing to dismiss accidents as acts of God, for example, so we don’t see the change. We don’t see it perhaps our responsibility for the climate. How do you get people to see that?

Mrs. Witherspoon: The problem is the media and that they believe in point/counter-point. So while there’s a thousand people, a million people who will tell you it’s climate related, they find the one guy, the kooky guy with the white hair going like this who says that it’s not, that it’s a farce, that the climate’s changed since the dinosaurs and this is just another example. So Americans are misled.

And Americans are inherently skeptical of intellectuals, of scientists, of elitists, of governments, and so if there’s someone to cast doubt they’ll believe the person casting doubt. That’s just the way Americans are. That’s their personalities.

Mr. Huddleston: Anyone else in the room have questions about American personalities or what’s going on in the US?

Question: I just wanted to ask, I didn’t do my homework, so what kind of measures has California implemented in order to curb emissions? And how does it differ from for example the emission trading scheme that Europe has put at the heart of its emission reducing strategy?

Mrs. Witherspoon: I should have explained that, thank you for the question.

The very first thing California did was to adopt greenhouse gas emission standards for cars because in California transport is 42 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions. Then the Governor stepped out with a set of comprehensive goals to go back to 1990 emissions by 2020, which for us is a 25 percent actual reduction. Since that announcement he said we’re going to do bio-fuels and have a ten percent reduction in carbon intensity by 2020. We had already established renewable power goals of 20 percent by 2010 and 33 percent by 2020.

But I must tell you, and a reporter in Oslo stuck a microphone in my face and said, why should I believe anything you say? Aren’t emissions in California going up just like everywhere else in the world? I said yes, they still are. They are still going up. In any growing economy they’re going up. All I can tell you is that when California makes a commitment we follow through.

But we have never made a commitment this big. I’ve worked in air pollution control for 26 years and this is the biggest challenge we have ever face. There are far more costs and more consequences than people grasp right away, and we’re going to hit wall after wall after wall, and we already hit one this summer where our legislature and our Governor argued about early action measures because the Governor favors markets, he favors cap and trade and he wants to lead with that. He says he knows we’ll do regulations but if we don’t talk about cap and trade business we’ll freak out and leave the table. So he emphasizes it all the time. But the legislature wants regulations, regulations. They’re Democrats. Regulate now, the world’s on fire, so they fought, fought, fought, and the air war got caught in the middle and the chairman was fired and then I resigned in protest and now there’s a new, more powerful chair and she’s setting up for the next fight which will be later this fall.

Ms. ______: Any more questions? If not then we’ll turn to Mr. Jos Delbeke.

Jos Delbeke has been chief negotiator on behalf of the European Commission in the previous United Nations conferences on climate change.

We know that in Bali in December there will be a next international conference. What are your expectations? Do you think there will be any commitment on behalf of the US, maybe China, India?

And a second question, as you were negotiator, which kind of negotiating method do you think works best, according to you?

Mr. Delbeke: The second part is the most difficult one. What do you expect for Bali?

I don’t think we are going to see the Europeans, the Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese, or anybody else taking commitments, new commitments. But what we need is an orderly process where we can talk to each other. Then in the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm there was at the highest level a debate on climate change and George Bush came with his proposal to talk mainly to the major emitters. The Europeans say yes, on one condition. That is that these debates are a fore-runner, a preparation for what should be dealt within the United Nations context. Because that’s an orderly way. We know how people are structured, how the processes can be structured.

So what we need in Bali is a commitment that within the UN context we have a timetable and we have a clear set out of the issues we are going to negotiate on.

So it’s bureaucratic, I know it’s a bit bureaucratic, but it’s good to moderate expectations because the world is not yet ready now for taking on new commitments. Just to be on the safe side, we are now implementing the Kyoto Protocol and the Kyoto Protocol runs until the end of 2012. So it is around 2009, 2010 that we have to know clearly what we are all going to do in the world.

So in that sense when Catherine is saying we need a new President, I would say this kind of coincidence works out relatively good.

Having said that, we fully understand how difficult it is for all countries around the world to be on the table, to rejoin the table, and in that sense the meeting next week in Washington, first in the United Nations on Monday/Tuesday, then in Washington later on, is a good in between step if it helps the American public opinion to rejoin the table to have an agenda that can be worked out, then we are always there to see what works out. We all have our methods. We have our methods in Europe. The Americans have their methods, the Japanese have, the Chinese have, et cetera. Working within the United Nations is also having full respect for the way others approach the table. In that sense having an orderly process, because you know on climate change, on every day somewhere in the world there is a conference. And that’s good to raise awareness. But that’s not so good because if people are only traveling and meeting and talking to each other then the work is not being done. So it’s good to have an orderly process, to have a timetable when is what issue is coming on the table, how it’s going to be prepared, how are we going to set out what the Chinese can bring on the table, the Brazilians, the South Africans, the Europeans, the Americans, the Japanese, et cetera. It’s going to be a complicated process but that’s the way I think we should do it.

Now if I can take the opportunity to talk about how we approach things. It’s very good to set out targets, but it’s even more important to start action. So it’s good to talk about 2020, 2030, 2050, whatever. We have to build an action in line of that time perspective. That’s climate change. It works over decades and centuries. But the action has to start now. That’s what we try to build up within Europe with the emission rating scheme. Not everything is working perfect, but if we in hindsight look at what is happening, all major industrial emitters in Europe today are subject to a restricted number of quota. They cannot change those quota. But the quota in total are restricted. And the fact that it really bites is shown by the trade.

Last year in 2006 the volume of trade of this quota in Europe was 18 billion euros. If I add to that the credits created under the Kyoto Protocol, we talk about the market of 23 billion euros. So these are incentives created to business to reduce their emissions.

But having said that, credibility is also the consumer -- you and me. The way we renovate our houses. We insulate our buildings. The way we drive our cars or organize our traffic. Management of traffic is becoming an extremely useful thing. Within Europe we concentrate ourselves in setting out product standards. That goes in line with the international market. So for cars, for example, we regulate cars for traditional pollutants, but the ones for greenhouse gases is going to bite in. We have now a political agreement for 130 grams of CO2 per kilometer. For the American translation it’s 43.5 miles per gallon. So that is generalizing the four, four and a half liter car in a perspective of 2012. That kicks in. Those who have followed the Frankfurt Motor Show have seen that a part from the fancy cars and apart from the SUVs, et cetera, there is a brand new segment that is coming to the market. It is about the clean car, the high energy efficient car. It is about the Europeans who have missed out on the hybrid car. It is not only about bio-fuels because there we also are somewhat less enthusiastic compared to our friends in the United States, but it is about technology. Basically we have most of the technology already in Europe but we don’t use that technology. That is why we need incentives for consumers, for businesses. We have the cars, we don’t drive the cars that are climate friendly. We know how to organize our traffic. We don’t use public transportation where we should do, et cetera, et cetera.

So having the long term perspective, the target is good but action starts now, and you learn the best from doing things. The learning by doing is absolutely important and that is where we are going to see heads of state in the coming months, and the commission coming forward with a proposal early December on a package of measures that comes close to the heart of energy policy. Catherine is absolutely right, climate change and energy policy cannot be disassociated from each other and that’s why we go for an integrated policy package of renewable energy. Part of it will be bio-fuels, part of it will be solar, will be biomass, et cetera. But the way we in particular also are going to be energy efficient in the way we handle our energy is going to be absolutely important.

My last sentence will be, perhaps that’s a major difference I observe between the US and Europe. After the 2nd World War we discovered in Europe that we wanted a highly industrialized continent but we were running out of energy. As a consequence, every European knows that we are dependent on the Middle East and on Russia. That’s becoming clearer and clearer every day, but it’s the decades after decades we have learned that. So the fact that we have overall energy efficiency standards which are worldwide seem not too bad, has a strong notion there. We have to push that further. We are extremely dependent on energy and I think that’s an agenda where we can join forces with the US, with Japan, with China. The way China is dealing with renewable energy is just not seen. I sometimes think the Chinese are doing more in renewable energy. We talk too much about renewable energy. It’s high time that we do as much as what the Chinese have already put in motion.

I will leave it there for a moment.

Voice: I just want to react on one example you quoted, the example of limits for cars.

We read in the news about the action of the German government, I don’t know if it’s true but at least it was in the news, who tried to make sure the impact was minimum on their national industry. Could you just react on this particular point, about the role of member states and how --

Mr. Delbeke: The technologies we need, we have them. We don’t use them. And making them means that those specialized and the biggest cars, the most fancy cars, the SUV producers, are going to have less market share in the future compared to other cars, fuel efficient cars. So those producing, they don’t like us coming forward with all these measures. So they are using the normal pressure mechanisms through the member states or through the lobbyists in Brussels to make known that we are less enthusiastic about those measures.

Having said that, I think the science on climate change is quite convincing and we have had the IPCC that has demonstrated that almost all scientists in the world agree on this. Then we have had the movie of Al Gore and we will see more of them. So people have realized that even if there is a little protest here or there, that may not bring that much water under the bridge. The way the 130 grams per kilometer has been decided and will be enforced and is being believed when I look at the advertising, advertising has changed on cars over the last year in that climate change, CO2 emissions, the car of the future.

The link between the car of the future and the green clean car concept has come together and I think that’s the way we have to go and it is good for creating new jobs and competitiveness. If we look in the world, who is going to drive which car? Or what is going to be the mass car of the future? It will be a highly energy efficient, low carbon car. Those not producing this car are going to face problems. I think that is the brutal reality for those manufacturing cars. I appreciate that others will change if you are in the manufacturing of cars and you are specialized in big cars. But the change is being accepted and being put into decisionmaking. I think that is the positive part of the story and we need a bit of time. You cannot change overnight. But the change is visible already after less than a year of having taken that decision. It has not yet gone through the institutions. It’s not yet law, but car manufacturers are already reacting proactively to that. I think that’s a sign of hope, and let’s face it, we know how to do it.

These engineers in the car industry are clever. They tell us even, we are fighting within the same company for budgets like you in the commission or in an administration are fighting for budgets. So we are in competition with the formula one budget, so the more you can make noise the more we get the resources to do what needs to be done.

So in that sense, yes, there are pressures. Let’s face it. We are provoking a number of changes that are important. But the fact that we see the decisionmaking going forward step by step is rather hopeful, and companies are following, and Europe is making a high quality [ground] out of this low carbon/high energy efficient products and processes and I think that is the way to go.

Voice: Any question on this car issue or any other questions?

Question: I will ask a question about bio-fuel because you raise this issue. Today is new and it’s good particularly for farmers for [inaudible], but we see after in the market it’s not so good. There is an unbalance between food and energy.

Mr. Delbeke: If I have to make a choice between an energy efficient car and a bio-fuel car, I think my choice is rapidly made. The reason is that we should not have the illusion that with bio-fuels we can sort out the scarcity of fossil fuels and in particular transport fuels. Why is that? Well, you need a lot of space to start with. Europe is a crowded area. Most of the world is a crowded area. We are not that spoiled compared to the United States and California, but there is plenty of space and where there is beautiful nature. The natural endowment of the United States is much higher compared to Europe where we are crowded on a relatively tiny place. And look at China, look at India, et cetera.

So the standard in the world is rather that you have not that mass surface available, and in that sense I think that bio-fuels are going to be part of the solution but in my expectation rather a tiny part of the solution. It’s going to be more energy efficiency, it’s going to be hybrid technology, and it’s going to be I think for Europe also clean diesel technology where we have to make a few steps further because we have had good success with diesel cars, and brought down the consumption of cars, but we have an air quality problem. We have particulate matter in the air. We have the problem in Brussels. I think when you come with your fresh nose from the United States you smell that the diesel car so popular in Europe, but we have to sort it out. So clean diesel, hybrid car, electric car, perhaps, is the way we are going to go. The bio-fuel car, I’m not seeing it. I don’t see the space and the potential for it.

Question: I have a short question. Environmental protection can clash sometimes with internal market rules, for instance. We’ve seen that in the Netherlands when the government tried to basically subsidize environmental friendly cars. How do you deal with this contradiction in the commission? And is it a time perhaps to say the core issue, one of the core issues of the European Union is an environmental protection maybe above and beyond internal market rules?

Mr. Delbeke: I think that things are changing relatively fast. Just the bureaucratic element. In the coming two months the commission will adopt new guidelines for state aid, protection in the field of the environment, and it is exactly about that. Leaving the member states much more space to use fiscal incentives to drive clean technologies into the market. So I think step by step in our different instruments in Europe, we are getting there.

But the most important is, and climate change is a perfect example of that, is that in the chapter on the environment in the Treaty of Rome has only been introduced in 1987. The single European act. Many of you studied about that. It’s only then that we have a legal base for environmental policy. So environmental policy in Europe at the European level is less than two decades old. I think you can see what has been performed in the field of waste, water, air, climate change, ozone protection, et cetera. That means that in Europe we do that together. Before ’87 we have the Dutch environmental policy, we have the German, French, British, Italian, et cetera. Nothing wrong with that, but we were running everywhere into problems related to the internal market. That is absolutely what we have to avoid.

If we have here and there a hiccup we can use the internal market to make sure that we have a better environmental policy. That’s, for example, what we are doing in the emissions trading scheme. We were informed that power stations were playing one member state against the other and saying if you give me more allowances or free I will put my power station this side or the other side of the border. That has been an alert for us to say this game has to stop. That’s why part of our review of the emissions trading scheme that is going to be proposed in December is going to be an absolute stop to this kind of bargaining and using, mis-using the internal market at the expense of the environment. But having said that, there’s still much work to do. I hope that you will give us much more inspiration today, tonight, but in the coming years as well.

Question: I’d like to ask a question about a subject that has not been talked about tonight and is usually left out when talking about climate change and that is livestock farming. Recently, well not recently any more, 2006, the FAO published a report, a very long and serious one, about the impact of livestock farming on the climate change and it came out that it’s even worse than the whole of the transport sector with 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

I was wondering whether there’s any plans in the US or in the European Commission to take this subject on board, maybe trying to convince people to eat maybe a little bit less meat and also to inform better about the impact of factory farming which has a dire energy balance.

Ms. Witherspoon: There are a lot of things that we understand to be true about climate change that we don’t talk about because it’s too early in the process and it would alienate the people that we need to support the big building blocks. The building of windmills and the changing of fuel quality and the changing of cars. If while you’re trying to get United States citizens to take seriously climate change and even think about people in other countries, and you said in the same breath, “And would you please stop eating meat?”, which doctors have been telling them to do for years, please stop flying, would you please by two pairs of shoes instead of ten. You would turn the people off you’re trying to bring in.

So I think it’s strategic, how to talk about it, and different organizations can carry the message better than government. It sounds too much like a nanny state, a police state, coming from us. But NGOs can talk about it, novelists can talk about it, editorial writers in the paper can talk about it and change people without stopping momentum toward big governmental actions. That’s what I think. It’s absolutely true.

Question: Factory farming would [inaudible]. It would be kind of sneaky in a way.

Ms. Witherspoon: We’re good at sneaky. If you can hide it and the costs aren’t obvious, regulators are good at sneaky. But coming right out and taking things away from people, they don’t like that at all.

Question: It would only be fair to internalize the external costs because of manure and of the chemical fertilizers and pesticides and all the impact that has not only on climate change but on the environment in general. These are all costs borne by the general public. By the taxpayer who has to clean up, or by just having a ruined environment. So that is really not fair. I think that’s a message that could be brought across quite clearly to people. I mean taxing factory farming --

Ms. Witherspoon: One of the good things that happens is when you start to lean on major traditional industries they yelp and scream and say that’s not fair. What about the factory farms? Then you have businesses against businesses and their lobbyists fighting it out and the congress people are free to set uniform standards for everybody. But you’ve got to get going and you’ve got to pick on the biggest guys first and let it play itself out.

Mr. Delbeke: If I may take up your question from a European perspective, the reform of the common agricultural policy is already reducing and will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions considerably. We see that in our statistics. So we have not yet opened up an additional layer of policymaking, but I think that’s what we are preparing in the future. We have now a consultation paper to see in every single European policy how we can integrate climate change and environment in general.

Agriculture will not be an easy one to deal with, but the trends towards less intensive agriculture helps us already a lot. That’s what we see.

I would like to pick up Catherine’s comment about putting people off. I think that’s a very valid comment. If we start telling people you can no longer take the plane, you have to stop driving your car, you can no longer eat meat, you can not, not, not, not, not, not, I think that people are going to turn off and say well the environment is going back to the Middle Ages. I think that would be very bad.

Having said that, there is a lot one can do and you mentioned the internalization of external costs. To the extent it is possible, you can turn around things. In fact the industrial society, the way it’s producing is a tanker and that tanker has to change direction. I think we are about to do that. But it’s changing direction. It’s not having everything sorted out.

Our emissions per capita in the world are still the highest. Let’s not dream. We do a lot of environmental policy. We have an active climate policy. But our emissions per capita are the highest in the world. They are on average --

Ms. Witherspoon: No, the United States is the highest. [Laughter].

Mr. Delbeke: The United States is definitely as high as the Europeans. [Laughter]. On average. And cost of energy efficiency is an explanation. The other explanation is nuclear energy. So we have to compare the two things with each other. But our energy efficiency standards are still ten times worse than in China. Energy use per capita, to be precise, is in Europe on average ten times higher than in China. The balance is even worse than India.

So all those who are complaining about the Chinese and the Indians not immediately joining the table and sign an agreement as we have done on the Kyoto Protocol must understand that the people say wait a minute, you have been polluting in increasing amounts for centuries because you industrialized. Now we are just about to industrialize and you would like to stop us. That’s what I hope we can bring to the table when next week amongst the major emitters. We must show understanding for that argument. Otherwise the developing countries are going to turn off. If they perceive climate policy as a way to stop their economic development, then I think the game is over. Then those who are indeed rapidly increasing their emissions, how low they are, they are going to say go away, you are a wealthy child kind of spoiled policy issue you are dealing with here, and that is exactly what we have to avoid otherwise we will never get an environmental policy across the globe. Also with those where it is barely needed.

Mr. Huddleston: Mr. Duwe, I wanted to get your reaction about this idea of what maybe we shouldn’t say to the general public. I think it’s quite interesting to ask someone with your network, with the Climate Action Network, someone with an NGO who would agree that there are things that we shouldn’t say to the public. Do you agree that people aren’t ready to know some of these things about what they actually should really do? Has this issue been discussed in the Climate Action Network about what issues to touch and which are too hot to touch?

Mr. Duwe: That’s obviously sort of a very difficult question. You have to see that in terms of the many roles that environmental groups play, one of them is certainly increased transparency about processes, discover and make public the truth behind certain political processes, behind certain contemporary problems, et cetera. At the same time we are aware of the magnitude of the challenge that climate change poses in terms of the many things that need to happen for us to avoid the most dangerous impacts. That means we need to have the broadest possible public and other types of support.

We are in that sense, and especially sort of me being obviously the representative of a network of groups here in Brussels where our game is also participating in a political discourse in a way that we win support for our ideas. That means also selling in a way if you want an idea. That’s what I think my co-presenters here were referring to essentially. There are ways that you can put people off if you’re too much in their face in terms of what you tell them.

I do think the public generally is ready in terms of being told the truth about what, for example, their consumption levels are compared to other parts of the world. I think there is no need to disguise the imbalances, for example. Part of the question is then making them accept the need for change. I think the arguments on both the scientific side of things and on the moral side of things are compelling.

The third part of that is what possibilities do they see in their own lives that they can become part of the change and the transformation that is necessary. That in some cases can be more radical, if you will. There’s a great scheme here in Brussels that you have an incentive to get rid of your car. If you deliver your license plate to your local commune you’ll get I think a year or whatever free access to public transport and free membership in a car-sharing system here in Brussels. For many people I think getting rid of their own car is a radical step, but I’m sure there are people that are considering things like this.

We have actually sort of, that’s advertising here, but it’s a real guide in terms of some of the things you can do in your daily lives that I’ve brought along. That is one of the publications that we produce, and it doesn’t say you can never have meat again and you must never fly, you have to walk everywhere. It does say wherever you can, try to avoid the use of planes. But there is a realization that we have to over time deal with this problem and we just have to politically accept also our, as countries and as societies, accept responsibility for the level of wealth that we are enjoying that is partially based on our use of the atmosphere, of the atmosphere that is essentially the global atmosphere and therefore a common right for others. That means in essence, translated into policy, that means at the international level that developed countries like the US, like the European Union, like Japan and others, need to be the first to make steps towards making absolute reductions in the level of their emissions. That is in fact one of the principles that is already enshrined in the international regime. That is something that is actually at the very heart of where the international debate is at the moment, the sort of who does what when.

I think the public is in fact more easy to persuade by being told the truth about a lot of these matters, that is necessary for us to go further than what we’ve committed so far, and that the demand of their politicians, and that they will demand of their ministers in Bali, go the next step.

Question: Excuse me, my sources are nearly as bad as my English. But I read about this very controversial proposal of flow about penal sanctions in the EU to promote the help of environment. So I was wondering what kind of effects it could have on individuals, because of course on industries it’s kind of politically easy, but how about individuals? As the person before said, like using deodorant or pesticides. Can you give amends for doing this? Or how could this system work?

Mr. Delbeke: In some of our environmental legislation we have introduced pecuniary, money sanctions. And even if those sanctions were hardly paid, I think it’s hardly a few euros we cashed in on that, it’s highly effective because no one wants to pay and as soon as we tell a member state or a public authority or a regional authority that they are in breach of a law and hence within X days they will have to pay money, a penalty, then wonders can happen extremely fast. It’s so bad publicity. Apart from the fact that in practice sanctions are money wise limited in proportion, it’s not the thing we are discussing in the field of the internal market, et cetera.

But I wanted to come back as well to the earlier part of the debate. I think I was understood a little bit as if I was a pessimist about what we can do. It’s just the reverse. If we concentrate on what we already can do now, then I’m absolutely an optimist and not a pessimist. I think putting off people is a risk. If you just demand far too much, when people say I cannot do it. Then we are living in a democracy, thanks God, so you have to convince people. If everybody is going to let down their arms and say it’s far too late, we cannot do anything about it, and you ask me on top of that not to go on holidays and not to take a plane and not to do this and not, not, not, not, not, then you don’t get anywhere. Your [inaudible] policy is finished. But if you can in the reverse say there is a technology out there, there is an alternative, there is a substitute you can do what you want differently, then it helps a lot. Then there is a public majority out there.

I find in my work, I work for the public sector, I find the majorities, we reach for our climate in environmental policy incredibly generous. We find our majorities, I mean in the European Union, qualified majority voting is a reality. You have to go into the council and the parliament and count your votes, but we get them. Look at what we have been voting over the last couple of years in terms of regulation that was meaningful, that changed things. Then you see there is out there a silent majority that you can activate if you can point at what can be done. I think that’s the positive thing that we have to keep in this debate. Because that keeps us going and that keeps us showing the tanker that can be changed direction.

Ms. Witherspoon: I think we could regulate people more, I honestly do. I think that, there was some interesting study and polling done in the United States that if you ask someone to stop doing something harmful they won’t comply, but if you make it impossible for them, they want you to save them from themselves. So Americans understand SUVs are a bad thing, but they’re right there so they’re going to buy them. If they went away, they wouldn’t buy them. If they became a lot more expensive, they would buy fewer of them. If all of them had to be built on car chassis instead of truck chassis they would all save more fuel. If they had to be hybridized, dieselized, Americans would get used to it. It would be $3,000 more, $4,000 more. If bottled water disappeared, you’d fill up a tap. You’d find something else to drink.

The thing that voters react violently to is a huge price jump in a necessary item like an electricity bill in their house where they can’t overnight consume 25 percent less electricity and offset a 25 percent price hike. Then you get a voter revolt and politicians out of office and all this sort of stuff. But there’s a lot you can do with regulations, just taking certain things away, they’re gone. Everybody gets on with their lives.

Mr. Delbeke: Australia has plans to ban inefficient light bulbs, if I’m not mistaken.

Ms. Witherspoon: They do. And plasma TVs which rich people are buying, they consume five times more electricity than a regular TV.

Mr. Delbeke: And LCDs use less.

Mr. Duwe: That’s my point. You tell people that an LCD uses less, you have advertising saying this uses less electricity, and people, the majority of people may not know. You need a highly educated public to know what is good, less good, and bad for the environment. So you cannot blame people for that. But I would rather blame advertising of cars where you see this big SUV in the desert giving you an illusion of freedom and excitement, which in fact in a central role in a city like Brussels, and this is a standard city in the world in Europe, what can you do with your SUV? You just line up in the traffic. But people buy the SUV. So I think advertising is something I think we have to address and we are now discussing a moral code, a voluntary code with the car manufacturers, because we keep seeing that.

Ms. Witherspoon: That’s ridiculous. Just regulate them. [Laughter].

Mr. Duwe: -- get my majority. So as long as I’m not sure about the majority then I have to go for a voluntary code.

Question: I have a comment for Mr. Delbeke first, and then a question for Mr. Duwe.

I think more than, the word I was looking for is for me your speech is pragmatic and I think it’s very appreciated in the context of the climate change debate because it can be very emotional. It concerns lives, our children’s future, so it can easily get too emotional and then we don’t get to solve things. I wanted to thank you in a way for being this pragmatic in the European context and international as well because you make comments like regarding the US that they’re our friends and we need to know that other people can see things in a different perspective and we have to accept that especially in the European setting. That was my comment.

Mr. Delbeke: Thank you.

Question: I have a question for you, coming from the Climate Network. How do you deal with comments or experts saying that climate change doesn’t exist? It’s coming. These comments are more and more revealed by the press. The Al Gore movie is questioned. So I’m wondering from your stand, how do you deal with these contradictions?

Mr. Duwe: I would call them climate change deny-ers. For a long time people used to say oh, these are the skeptics. I’m skeptical about a lot of things and that’s I think generally very healthy because you question things you’re unsure of. I think in this day and age, it’s particular in the year 2007 where we’ve had basically the very latest state of the science presented to the international public by an intergovernmental panel of basically the best scientists that the globe has on this very issue. To then go and say oh, yeah, but it could be the sun, don’t you think? Seriously. That is no longer being skeptical, that is sort of denying certain very high likelihoods that the scientists discovered about what the truth of the matter is here.

What we try to emphasize always is the climate change signs will always have an element of uncertainty, as with almost any science. Think about all the things you get told about when and where to eat what and is it really healthy to have salad in the evening or not, things like that. You have a lot of things that you have uncertainty about, you’re being told different things from different people. There’s another study here, there’s another study there.

On climate change that is no longer the case. In terms of the scientific material that publications, they are absolutely with a certain majority and overwhelmingly sort of pointing in the same direction.

The question is uncertainty a cause for action or for inaction? And if you’re faced with the magnitude of the problem that we have here and the magnitude of the likely impact and the likely impact that people are already seeing that are down to people, down to species, and also to in fact industrial sectors, then the question is is it better to act and be wrong or to not act and in fact be wrong in terms of climate change being reality?

I think what we also know about the economics of dealing with the problem, of making the necessary emission reductions, we know the impacts, the global economic impacts are bearable. So we will always be better off acting in the face of uncertainty with the necessary level of scientific clarity that we have to not acting and then facing a very likely, with a very high likelihood, facing a negative impact and damages and species loss thanks to climate change.

I have to say actually, and I’ve said over the years that I’ve been following this issue, the climate deny-er is on the retreat, big time. Maybe this year or -- We need to get somebody else out there, but apart from that there is just overwhelming support, also politically except for real small pockets such as, I know it’s an issue in the Czech Republic because the President there is even so incensed about what he thinks is humbug when it comes to climate change that he’s written a book about it. But among leaders and decisionmakers I think these are sort of absolute smaller and smaller minorities.

Mr. Huddleston: We’re going to take two questions, then we’ll do a five minute break and come back more about citizen issues. But first, these two questions.

Question: I would like to ask a question of Mr. Delbeke, but the others might wish to answer also. I would like to see what you think, how can we ensure that the clean investment mechanism under the emissions trading scheme where companies invest in clean technologies in the developing world, how can we ensure that these investments actually have long term positive impact for developing countries and are not just an excuse to pollute in the developed world?

A second question also on what you think could be the guidelines or the base for a sustainability criteria for bio-fuels so that they don’t have a negative impact on the environment? And if you think that in the future we’ll have a target the way we have for bio-fuels for hydrogen or other sources of energy, or are we going to increase the share of renewables? Thank you.

Question: In talking about climate change it’s often rather technical. They talk about incentives here, regulation there, but you tend to oversee certain things quite easily. Just one example, with the best intentions often in development policy World Bank programs lead to the burning of wood so that makes Indonesia the third biggest country emitting greenhouse gases.

My question is to what extent is the commission and the government of California A, aware of it; B, in contact with the other experts; and C, trying to interconnect those issues and trying to build up pressure in order also to change development and foreign policy on these matters?

Mr. Delbeke: The first on the CDM. We in Europe, we always advocated a more restrictive approach to CDM because we saw coming what happened. What happened is that in HFCs which is a by-product of ozone-depleting substances, that normally you have a very good technology to avoid the release of HFCs. That’s standard in Europe, standard in the United States, standard in the world. But not in China.

So ozone-depleting substances and HFCs in particular, they are also bad for climate change. This is a greenhouse gas.

So the Chinese came and said look, if we cut down this HFC emissions then we are entitled to have credits under the CDM. And that’s true. You cannot deny that. But the real question is should not that have been done already way before for good, other reasons? And should we now give scarce credits for this kind of technology? That’s the whole thing. For what technologies are we going to give credits? Credits that then can be sold on the European market. We hope in the future on the global market, but so far it’s on the European market. That has sparked a debate about which technologies. As far as many of us are concerned, we should be much more restrictive in the technologies we are rewarding so as to make sure that the low hanging fruit, things that need to be done anyway because it’s good policy, solid policy, good for the health of the people living there, et cetera, we should not reward that in addition.

So on the CDM we are going to have a debate. It’s part of the things we are going to discuss in the process following from Bali up to the new international agreement that is going to be the successor of the Kyoto Protocol. CDM, that’s going to be the heart. Which technologies, what kind of rewards, where do we put the bottom line.

Question: [Inaudible]?

Mr. Delbeke: CDM -- thanks for the question. CDM is the Clean Development Mechanism. The clean Development Mechanism is a vehicle created by the Kyoto Protocol. And in fact it says when you make an investment, I’ll give an example. When an investor, a business, makes an investment in a developing country, say in Morocco, and it says well, instead of ugly technology I come with clean technology, then the difference in the carbon emissions between a standard technology and a clean technology could give rise to credits. These credits could be sold on the market like we are changing allowances for greenhouse gases in Europe.

So it is a carbon market issue created by the Kyoto Protocol. So it’s a reward for businesses to the extent that they bring clean technology to developing countries, and who decides on that is a UN body. So we are negotiators there and we will try to have a CDM Executive Board much more restrictive compared to what we have seen so far. That will be on our agenda and we will see what comes out of that.

Briefly on the sustainable criteria for bio-fuels, we are going to be quite restrictive within Europe. Within Europe we can regulate. The whole issue is that imports of bio-fuels happens as well and the import may be quite voluminous coming from Brazil, coming from Malaysia, coming from Indonesia, et cetera. And it is quite hard to the WTO, the World Trade Organization, to impose our rules on developing countries. You can do that for a product but you cannot do it for a production method. That’s hardly done in international law.

So we are going to do that. We are going to take that initiative, but we are making ourselves extremely unpopular with President Lula who came over to Brussels exactly to hammer on that point. There was a full conference where President Baroso was, and the message by Lula was no sustainable environmental and other additional criteria on the bio-fuels that we are producing. And we said, but you are producing bio-fuels and cutting down the rain forest. We don’t want that. President Lula said but you were cutting won your forests in Europe too, so why are you going to deny us, the Brazilians, the right to cut down our forests when I look around, forests were here in the Middle Ages, but they have completely disappeared.

So that’s the kind of very tricky and difficult international debate one gets when you sit around the table and where you have to make your argumentation. That is an example of the complexity to link development. Lula says we have bio-fuels and we want to sell on the European market, and we say well thank you very much, we don’t want them. So they say we want to develop and the only thing we can do is and we should do much more vitally is that development aid that we are giving to put an additional environmental condition to them. But, but, but, when we come to developing countries and we try to do that, again we make ourselves very unpopular. They say this is money for the poor and the poor are already suffering from a bad environment, and on top of that you are going to spend this money on other things related to the environment.

So you see internationally it’s a very very complicated debate we are in trade wise, and when we give aid money. But as we give the aid money I think we should be pragmatic and add additional criteria to that. I think we should put a stand there.

Question: It might help a bit more if you would include the existing forest, the rain forest in the carbon trade scheme as an incentive. A lot more than putting more conditions to certain development aid money. And that has not been done. I think that’s important.

Mr. Delbeke: We have been studying that and we have not been doing that for a simple reason. If we would have to pay CDM credits for not doing something and in particular for something so vast like the rain forest of Central America, then our carbon credit market, in Europe the ETS, the European Trading System, prices would fall down to zero because so many credits would be generated through such a measure that we would have a complete imbalance between the supply and demand which is zero price.

We made simulations on that. That’s why we have to take a lot of actions to protect the forests and to avoid deforestation. So nothing wrong by that, but when we link that to the carbon market we feel there would be a fundamental imbalance because we are talking many different things here.

Ms. ______: Maybe one question regarding the ETS. We didn’t talk about the willingness of the commission to include [inaudible] into the ETS. Could you maybe explain a bit --

Mr. Delbeke: Well, you will see the fire in a few days, next week. There is an ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization is having its ICAO Council which is the highest body. It’s another international organization where all safety, security and other things are regulated for all airline industries. We are criticized severely by ICAO that we are again intruding on international regulations and they see it as an attack on the sovereignty of airline aviation business, et cetera.

Now we are very determined. Climate change is a global business. Aviation is perhaps the most global business you can think of. So if we are going to have an aviation inclusion into the ETS only for Europe we talk about peanuts, we talk about 10, 15, perhaps 20 percent of the operations we are doing. So it’s international aviation that we have to include and for us it’s a better vehicle to break open also on the legal front the argument with the United States and with the American airlines in saying look, we should do that for all airlines in the world. We do not single out any other airline industry, we do not single out you, we do not single out the Chinese or the Koreans or the whatever, but it should be for all airline industry. Then we have no competitive distortions.

So we go for a bit of a heated debate. I think we should pursue that. Europe is absolutely united in the ICAO Council. You will read about that next week. We will be slaughtered by all others, but we are very determined to go ahead if only because the European Parliament this week adopted a program where we have an absolute support for the proposal we have been making.

So that is loading up the boat for the international negotiations we are going to have as of Bali and you have to put forward legal proposals. Otherwise it remains with good intentions and with intentions alone we don’t make policy.

Ms. ______: Mr. Duwe, do you want to react or you are too tired and you want to have --

Mr. Duwe: Absolutely. I’m not tired, but I don’t mean to keep people from their breaks.

I think just on a very general note, I think that a particular proposal to include aviation in the EU Mission’s Trading System is just also a fantastic example of how certain industry sectors can react and seriously, although they may be gaining some traction, for example, in the European Parliament and some member states can make a fool of themselves.

The aviation industry I think is one of those that has been compared with the many other parts, sort of other industrial sectors that have had to face climate change related regulation for a long time. They’ve basically been sort of left out and sort of left in peace for a long time. They have all kinds of privileges still. There is not the kind of taxation that you have on vehicle fuel, you don’t have that for kerosene. You have no VAT on international tickets, things like that. That’s all from an era where every country in Europe wanted to build up its own national aviation industry and its own carrier. Most of those of course these days privately owned and there is quite some competition as I’m sure sort of many of you have found out over the last couple of years with the emergence of sort of the so-called low cost airlines. There is competition. There are new players on the market. It’s overall more of a moving target.

But the outcry that the possible inclusion in a climate change related policy proposal has created among many of the carriers has been fascinating to watch, I think, in terms of, I think Lufthansa in Germany, for example, was threatening the government to say we’re going to move our headquarters to Switzerland because that’s not part of the European Union.

If you look on the face of it, what is actually being proposed, a colleague of mine was looking up the details again a couple of days ago. A trip to New York from Europe in sort of your average filled aircraft you have an individual climate change contribution from your flight with just one leg, or let’s call it two, about 700 kilos of CO2 equivalent roughly. If you translate that into current and expected prices in the EU emissions rating system that’s an additional price on the ticket that is around let’s say 10 euros, let’s say 15. That’s an additional cost if the air carrier is able to pass the full cost of participating in this system on to the passenger. So assuming that.

The air carriers are claiming that they will basically sort of be disadvantaged by having that kind of inclusion. But if you see that kind of example on these long haul flights this additional add-on to the ticket is something that few passengers will notice on the ticket that’s already 500 euros, et cetera. You have an industry crying foul that’s basically amazingly surprised that all of a sudden policymakers have found out that they contribute to clim