WSSD on Energy -- Nothing for the Poor, Nothing for the Climate
WWF
The Johannesburg World Summit will go down in history as a missed opportunity to
deliver energy to the 2 billion people on this planet with no access to energy
services, and as a failure to kickstart the renewable energy revolution that is
required to protect the climate. The United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Canada,
and Australia left the convention center today secure in the knowledge that they
had protected their fossil fuel interests, while Brazil, Norway, New Zealand,
Switzerland, Iceland and some members of the EU spoke up about their
disappointment about the failure to move forward on energy.
‘There were some nice speeches in the plenary today from Heads of State and
Government about the need to protect the climate and to fight poverty’, said
Jennifer Morgan of WWF. ‘But the Ministers in the negotiating rooms downstairs
obviously weren’t listening. This Summit’s Bush Energy plan isn’t worth
the carbon in the paper it’s printed on.”
“After over a year of debate, the WSSD energy section does not represent a
single step forward. The Plan of ‘Action’ is not much of a plan and it
contains almost no action. We’ve spent the last year and a half doing damage
control,” said Steve Sawyer of Greenpeace . “We now have to move forward
with a ‘coalition of the willing’, those countries who want to deliver a
sustainable energy future for their people.”
“Whether its lost opportunities for cleaner, healthier household energy
sources, or increased risk of vulnerability to global climate change, the poor
come out losing on every count,” said Antonio Hill of Oxfam International .
The energy section of the Plan of Implementation, as it is now agreed:
- Delivers nothing on energy supply for the 2 billion people worldwide who
have no access to modern energy services.
- Has no targets or timetables of any kind for the uptake of renewable
energy.
- Delivers nothing on reducing the massive subsidies to the fossil fuel
industry which continue to prop up its dominance of the global energy mix.
- Merely reiterates agreements made over the past several years.
More WSSD news
|
