European Union leaders threatened the United States and China with trade sanctions Friday if the world's two biggest polluters don't commit to ambitious cuts in greenhouse gases by next year.
The warning came as the economic downturn focused European leaders on the impact on industry of their groundbreaking agreement last year to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
EU leaders want similar commitments from other major economies by next year, when a conference on global warning is to take place in Copenhagen, Denmark. Otherwise they say European companies will need protection from unfair competition from heavily polluting rivals in China and the United States — the world's biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.
In a declaration issued after a two-day summit, the 27 EU leaders warned: "If international negotiations fail, appropriate measures can be taken" to protect European industry.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy went further. "Our main concern is to set up a mechanism that would allow us to strike against the imports of countries that don't play by the rules of the game on environmental protection," he told reporters Friday.
hmmm. A new mechanism for decoupling? Or are we on the cusp of a deglobalization period? After all the Democrats are painting themselves into a corner wrt NAFTA. The Europeans are talking carbon tariffs that are protectionist. What happens to the economies of the world if this takes place (and it probably will) and the Chinese continue to charge ahead in their horribly inefficient carbon economy and the dollar keeps going boing-boing?
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