The French Greens have called on European countries to adopt a unified stance at the 2015 UN climate conference, underlining the importance of supporting Poland in its energy transition.

 

A gathering organised by the French Green party, called 'New Initiatives for Europe', discussed the issues of the 21th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in the French capital in December 2015.

 

Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), presented the fifth scientific assessment report by his expert group, which painted a more worrying picture of climate change than the previous, 2007 version.

 

For international scientific experts, the temperature of the earth could rise to 4.8 degrees celsius by 2100 and the sea level could rise by about 1 metre.

 

Green MPs and the French minister for development, Pascal Canfin, expressed their concern at the alarming figure. "The most likely situation today is that we are not able to contain global warming below 2 degrees by the end of the century. But the good news is that according to the latest IPCC report, this goal is still in the realm of possibility," Canfin said.

 

"We are now in the Obama II era. There now has a will of the president of the United States to leave a positive result on climate policy,” Canfin said.

 

Another important aspect for the French Greens is to maintain fairness between Northern and Southern countries when sharing the burden of reducing carbon emissions.

 

"If countries such as India , South Africa and Nigeria reached our CO2 levels of emissions per capita, we are headed to a temperature increase of 5 degrees," warned Canfin.

 

The EU has adopted a binding target to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide by 20% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels and even increase the share of renewable energy in its energy mix.