29 April 2010

Last week The Guardian revealed that the chemical industry is behind a lobbying campaign aimed at preventing the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by the United States’ Environment Protection Agency (EPA).

Court documents show that the European chemical firm Solvay is at the heart of this campaign. The US court document linking Solvay to this campaign can be found here.

Back in Europe that same sector and company is using the mantra that "Europe cannot act alone" and lobbies strongly against more ambitious climate action. This is the same as saying that if the US takes no action to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, why should the EU do so?  If we put both the EU and US actions of Solvay together we see a very cynical ploy to undermine all climate action on an international scale. It is exactly such lobbying activities that led to the weak outcome in Copenhagen.

CAN-Europe believes that European policy makers have to be very aware of those actions which are detrimental to avoiding dangerous climate change and take them into account when they deal with such companies and sectors.