By John Parnell
The EU has reaffirmed its commitment to the target to limit warming by 2°C just days after the USA had suggested it was unworkable.
US climate change envoy Todd Stern said in a speech last week that a rigid 2°C target could act as a road block to international negotiations managed through the UN’s climate change agency, the UNFCCC.
The talks will begin work later this year to establish a globally binding agreement to cut emissions by 2015.
At a previous UNFCCC meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, President Obama joined world leaders in signing the Copenhagen Accord, which includes a pledge to limit warming to 2°C.
This threshold was identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the upper limit of “safe warming”.
“World leaders pledged in Copenhagen to stay below the 2°C temperature increase. What leaders promised must now be delivered,” said Isaac Valero-Ladron, spokesperson for the European Commission.
“Consolidated science continues to remind us of the dire consequences of going beyond such a temperature increase,” he told the Reuters news agency.
Former UNFCCC chief Yvo de Boer has also called for a shift in priorities from the global climate talks saying a focus on transitioning to a low carbon economy could have more impact than setting national greenhouse gas targets.
The IEA has warned that the opportunity to achieve the 2°C limit is already slipping away.