Public Radio Asks Why U.S. Should Adopt Failed E.U. Carbon Reduction Plans

Host of American Public Media's (APM) Marketplace broadcast, Scott Jagow, asked “why would the U.S. or any other country go along” with the European Union's carbon reduction plan if there is “so much skepticism about whether they can actually do it.”

European correspondent Stephen Beard expressed his concern, in the March 8 report, entitled “Climate pressure building in Europe”, saying, “We’ve had already so many examples of performance falling well short of promise” from the European Union’s emission’s trading system and ultimately, "Cutting greenhouse gases is going to involve some economic pain.”

According to Beard, before the energy summit in Brussels, Belgium, E.U. Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs conceded that putting a price on carbon was a failure.

The E.U., wants to cut carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020 and if larger industrialized nations like the U.S. get involved, the figure could balloon to 30 percent.

The U.S. Ambassador to the E.U., John Bruton, told the February 10 issue of The Independent:

This is why Europe is having so much trouble with their own emissions trading system. It's not working, it simply isn't working. Member states are rejecting the Commission's allocations because to do this unilaterally - or even if we were part of it, for the transatlantic to do it unilaterally - without India and China would just be to ship these jobs to where there are no costs.

Despite outcries like these, European Commission President Jose Barroso was quoted in an interview with Bloomberg saying that cutting emissions is “good for European competitiveness” and that there were “clear advantages for the first movers.”