In Brussels, the seat of the European Union, the New Year has begun with much sombre soul searching. Already struggling to combat high unemployment and revive its sluggish economy, the outcome of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen has deepened the sense of crisis that has come to pervade the European project.
Insecure about its declining geostrategic significance in a new world order characterised by a rising Asia, Europe had homed in on the battle against climate change as its primary weapon in laying claim to a continued position of global leadership.
In Copenhagen, the EU thus attempted to play the mediator, finding ways to bring the US on board, while persuading the major emerging economies to commit to more than they seemed willing.
The result of these efforts was a deal between the United States and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) countries that left Europe out in the cold, exposing the hollowness of its claims to leadership.
Ignored by the US and disparaged by the developing world, Europe is now left struggling to devise ways in which to revive its lost influence and, thereby, restore a sense of purpose.
It is proving difficult. To claim leadership in the patent absence of willing followers has been exposed as delusion. The post-mortem is ongoing, and the question being asked is who is to blame for what is largely seen as the Copenhagen debacle: China, the US or the EU itself?
China is the easiest target and has correspondingly been put up as the chief fall guy in the European media, with the UK climate secretary, Ed Miliband, openly claiming that China “hijacked” the Copenhagen summit.
The US’ less-than-edifying role in the process has also caused a few low grumblings in Brussels’ corridors of power, but these are kept from getting too loud. To point the finger squarely at the US is politically difficult for the EU, which, despite chafing against many of the actions of its trans-Atlantic ally, remains tied to it both militarily and ideologically.
But, Copenhagen has also led to introspection in Brussels with the difficult-to-escape conclusion that Europe had itself to blame as much as any one else for what went down at the summit.
In her hearing before the European Parliament last month, the new European commissioner-designate for climate action, Connie Hedegaard, blamed the EU’s lack of efficacy on its inability to speak with one voice.
Tom Brooks, managing director of the European Climate Foundation’s (ECF) Energy Strategy Centre, points out that strong disagreements among the 27 members of the EU resulted in its inability to “move forward itself, while asking other parties to do so”.
Many considered the EU’s trump card at the negotiations to be an offer to commit to a unilateral 30 per cent reduction in its carbon emissions over 1990 levels, up from the 20 per cent pre-Copenhagen offer.
With some countries like Britain keen on raising the offer, others like Poland resisted. The result was an EU with hobbled ambitions.
This is a scenario unlikely to change in the near future. The first month of the EU’s functioning under the much heralded Lisbon Treaty put paid to the idea of its providing the source for Europe’s renewed relevance.
The EU stuck to its 20 per cent emissions reduction offer in its notification to the United Nations last week. The idea that by unilaterally increasing its emissions cut target, the EU will regain its moral leadership on climate change is thus a strategy that looks dead for the time being.
With carrots having been shown as untenable, sticks are another option that Europe is contemplating. Enter the threat of carbon tariffs, actions that France and the steel industry have been arguing will give the EU more leverage.
However, the EU’s designated trade commissioner, Karel de Gucht, has publicly warned that such moves could set off a global trade war, making it a doubtful tactic under the current circumstances.
Instead, Europe’s main strategy going forward, according to ECF’s Brooks, will be to focus less on the grand sweep of global leadership and more on the less glamorous but pragmatic work of “getting on with the internal processes of low carbon prosperity”.
“The Copenhagen Accord has ensured that the foreseeable future will be about national actions,” he says.
The greatest hope for the EU’s claims to leading the climate change fight, other analysts say, is for it to focus on developing low-carbon technologies and figuring out how best to reduce conflicts between economic growth and environmental sustainability.
However, the ironic flip side is that the more successful Europe is at reducing its own carbon emissions, the smaller a part of the global problem it will represent, making it less, rather than more, relevant in the global climate change debate.
Moreover, it will do little to allay the suspicion in the developing world that Europe’s climate evangelising has more to do with the self-interested protection of privilege than the do-gooding pieties it lays claim to.
“Why does Europe define climate change, which may or may not have effects in the future, as the burning issue of the day rather than the 1.8 million children who die of diarrhoea every year?” asks a negotiator from one of the BASIC countries.
Others say the idea of a peaking year for global emissions, something pushed for by Europe, will only serve to lock-in the disparities between the economically privileged status enjoyed by the EU and the deprived circumstances of the majority of the population in the developing world.
These are issues that remain largely unaddressed or even acknowledged in the rash of post-Copenhagen post-mortems that Brussels continues to host. But, until the EU addresses these effectively, its ambitions to climate change leadership are not likely to succeed on the basis of technological innovation alone.
