Ministers meet for final stages of climate change talks

INDUSTRY SHOULD embrace stronger environmental controls, a leading chemicals manufacturer has urged, as ministers from the world’s biggest polluting countries meet in London for the final stages of climate change talks that will culminate in Copenhagen in December.

Peter Huntsman, chief executive of Huntsman, told the Financial Times that the US and European Union should act together to raise environmental standards for manufacturing and force global competitors to comply as a condition of access to their markets.

“Our industry ought to be out fighting for . . . a higher standard instead of falling to the lowest common denominator,” Mr Huntsman said.

However, his remarks may be seen as protectionist, since any attempt by the US and EU to link environmental controls directly to trade could be seen as a way of excluding competitors in the developing world from the largest western markets.

In London, Todd Stern, President Barack Obama’s special envoy for climate change, said developing countries must do more than they had agreed so far to curb emissions growth.

“Where they are right now is almost certainly not enough, if you’re talking about getting toward a place that’s in the vicinity of holding the temperature increase to two degrees [a level which scientists say is the limit of safety],” he said.

“It’s very important for China to do what they are doing and more than that.”

Public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic is firmly in favour of China taking on the lion’s share of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Harris poll taken for the Financial Times.

At the same time people are lukewarm about providing funds to the developing world to adapt to climate change.

However Mr Stern said a deal was still possible in December at the climate change summit in Copenhagen, where countries will try to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto protocol. The US has yet to put forward a target for cutting emissions, but Mr Stern said it was clear in what range such a target would fall, as the Bill on cap-and-trade requires cuts of 17 per cent by 2020 and the current Senate Bill cuts of 20 per cent.

Meanwhile in Singapore, Mr Huntsman accused his own industry in the US and Europe of continuing “to fight against environmental legislation that by and large the general public want . . . We seem to be continually coming down on the wrong side of history.”

Mr Huntsman said he was “not a protectionist”, pointing out that 40 per cent of his company’s manufacturing operations were outside the US and Europe. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009