Environment Minister Ville Niinistö wants to position Finland at the forefront of a movement to reduce carbon and greenhouse emissions. Minister Niinistö made the proposal in an Yle interview following the conclusion of the Doha conference Saturday.
According to Niinistö, the Finnish government is currently evaluating whether the European Union could raise its own emission reduction target by the year 2020. Currently the EU aims to reduce emissions by 20 percent.
“We are currently considering whether the EU could commit to a 30 percent reduction without the need for other national groups to get on board,” Niinistö told Yle Monday morning.
He said that such an ambitious target would be rational from both an economic as well as an environmental standpoint, because it would stimulate investment into green technologies and would also increase employment in low emissions industries.
“Global warming must stay below two degrees”
The Minister admitted that the environmentalists would have been disappointed with the results of the Doha climate conference. He described the talks as an interim forum, which however managed to secure an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which binds industrialized nations to reduce their carbon emissions.
Niinistö said that he believed that it was still possible to achieve a comprehensive new agreement by the year 2015. He also said it is still possible to reach the goal of limiting global warming to two degrees, as long as tight measures are introduced.
“A new agreement would have to be genuinely comprehensive and ambitious enough, based on science and not on bilateral contests,” he said.
Achieving the global warming target also demands other actions, Niinistö said. He stressed that particles, black coal, fluorinated greenhouse gases as well as extremely potent greenhouse gases like methane should be capped quickly.
“But that would require massive actions by all countries,” Niinistö said.
