climate

During his U.S. book tour in April 2015, we spoke with our Co-President, Ralf Fuecks, about the need for a global, smart green growth strategy, outlined in his new book Green Growth, Smart Growth – A New Approach to Economics, Innovation and the Environment.

Long-term aims are important for the consistency of policies in the area of climate protection, but the absence of medium-range aims is now holding back progress in the international negotiations on a new post-Kyoto agreement. Had Barack Obama made it to the White House just a few months earlier than he did, the negotiations as a whole might be much further along. On Monday, Czech Environment Minister Martin Bursík told a meeting of the European Council of Member State environment ministers that the impassiveness of the American position is preventing forward movement. Climate change and the EU position on the Copenhagen conference were the main topics of the meeting.

The conference organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Ministry of Environment provided good opportunity for exchange and debate among the climate diplomats, government officials, experts, business and NGOs representatives and interested public (over 160 participants). The main aim of the conference, the biggest of its kind in the new EU member states this year, was to assess where the EU, USA and other key players stay shortly before the Copenhagen Climate Conference (COP 15) this December. Far beyond that, three thematic workshops in the afternoon provided for an intensive expert discussions on the issues of the cost of the unabated Climate change, ways how to finance the measures against it and last but not least the economic opportunities stemming from the „green investments“ and mitigation measures.