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The next victim of Europe’s economic crisis is becoming the global effort to restrain fossil fuel emissions and curb pollution now at record levels.

The European Union, which led the fight by establishing the biggest market for carbon emissions, is letting the matter slip as a priority. EU leaders didn’t discuss climate strategy at their four summits this year, while France, Germany, Spain and Britain are focused on paring the region’s 10.5 percent unemployment rate and 10.8 trillion euros ($13.9 trillion) in debt. The matter didn’t emerge during U.S. presidential debates.

“What scares me is that climate policy is sliding off the international policy agenda,” International Energy Agency Chief Economist Fatih Birol said in an interview in advance of the United Nation’s annual round of talks on the issue that start in three days in Doha, the capital of the Qatar.

The inaction contrasts with widening concern among scientists that the time to react is passing. Sea ice in the Arctic shrank to its lowest on record this summer as drought devastated corn crops in the U.S. Midwest and superstorm Sandy pummeled the East coast after becoming the largest ever tropical system in the Atlantic. The World Meteorological Organization says greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere touched a high in 2011, and the UN says that will make the weather more volatile.

For now, the economy remains the focus of policymakers across Europe, leaving the biggest polluters in the U.S. and China with little impetus to break their deadlock over how to act. The 27-nation EU expects the economy to shrink 0.3 percent this year, the second recession in four years.

While the union is working on energy-efficiency measures and curbs for emissions for autos and industry, its leaders express frustration that other nations aren’t following their example with more aggressive action.

“Nothing is easy because of the crisis,” EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in an interview. “The big thing that people globally need to understand is that we don’t only have an economic crisis. We also have a social and job crisis, and we still have a climate and environment crisis. We can through climate policies also help create some jobs we need so badly.”

The EU will exceed its goal to slash emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, she said. Even so, there’s less zeal in EU member nations to go further on environmental goals.
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“The Europeans must lead on climate protection to put pressure on others and ensure that the global debate on climate protection continues,” German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier told reporters in Berlin today. “That will only be possible if the Europeans at home ensure that everyone sees that we’re taking climate protection seriously and we’re willing to commit ourselves to ambitious targets.”

Leaders of the EU haven’t discussed climate strategy this year. They mentioned climate change in the concluding statement of just one of their three regular scheduled summits this year. That’s down from two out of five times in 2011. In 2009 and 2010, climate came up at all nine meetings. The lull leaves the U.S., China and India, the three biggest emitters, with little pressure for action.
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“The economic crisis, which is unparalleled in modern times, has caused everyone to stop and re-evaluate everything that the government is doing,” U.K. Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said in an interview. “Taking action in most cases isn’t without cost,” though the costs of climate change may outweigh the price of fighting it, he said.
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“We are now facing a timing challenge where we have to wait until 2020 for all countries to adopt legally binding emission-reduction targets,” Gambian envoy Pa Ousman Jarju, who speaks for the UN’s 48-nation Least Developed Countries group, said in an e-mailed response to questions. “The risk with this situation is that no one steps forward to reduce emissions because they are simply waiting for others to join.”

By 2017, it may be impossible to avoid warming greater than the 2-degree target, the International Energy Agency says. UN scientists in 2007 calculated that developed nations must cut emissions 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to stay on track.

“We are not seeing that from any quarter,” Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, the lead climate envoy for Brazil, told reporters on Nov. 14. “Science is telling us with increased certainty the dangers of inaction.” Much more at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-23/pollution-sets-record-as-euro
-crisis-slows-climate-drive.html

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