- Nineteen prisoners use cutlery to break out of cells at Winchester prison
- France wants progress in Ukraine before Russia returns to G7
- Italy president begins talks to seek way out of government crisis
- Italian PM expected to resign as political chaos deepens
- Russia says US cruise missile test ‘regrettable’
- Kremlin - No date set for Normandy talks on Ukraine despite Macron meeting
- Egypt court hands out 6 death sentences on terror charges
- Putin says Russian nuclear explosion poses no threat
- Russian panel eyes alleged foreign interference in protests
- Gran Canaria wildfire triggers evacuation of thousands of people
- PM Johnson calls on Germany and France to compromise on Brexit
- Sudan's ex-president Bashir arrives at corruption trial
TEHRAN, August 26 - A proliferation of extreme weather events around the world provides ample evidence that climate change is a reality, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, but she rejected calls for more ambitious climate protection goals.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Extreme temperatures across the northern hemisphere this summer have fueled concerns that climate change is gathering pace, leading dozens of countries to call for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut at a faster rate than planned.
But Merkel said such calls, most recently from the European Commission's climate chief Miguel Arias Canete, for swifter cuts to harmful carbon dioxide emissions would be counterproductive, adding that setting new goals made little sense when European countries were already struggling to meet their cuts targets.
"I'm not particularly happy about these new proposals," she said of Canete's call to increase from 40 to 45 percent the scale of cuts to target by 2030.
"I think we should first stick to the goals we have already set ourselves. I don't think permanently setting ourselves new goals makes any sense."
Merkel's government has already faced criticism for abandoning emissions targets it had set itself for 2020 after concluding they were unachievable, while sticking to a target it had set itself for a decade later.
This summer's sweltering temperatures across Europe have reignited the climate debate, with record temperatures across the continent causing sea ice to melt in the Arctic, and triggering forest fires across the continent.
"One summer doesn't on its own express it, but the piling up of extreme weather conditions and the rising temperatures shows climate change isn't just in Africa and the Arctic and Antarctic, but here too," Merkel said.
(Source: Reuters)
Your Comment