Eu Response To The Basic Experience Of Climate Change And Its Reference

Climate Change is one of the most serious challenges that mankind faces today and in the future. Compared with other countries, especially US, Canada, Australia and Japan, the European Union (EU) has achieved great success in fighting against Climate Change, providing a lot of valuable lessons for other countries and societies. It is necessary for China, still facing great challenges in this area, to learn from EU and draw on their lessons.There is a four-step basic responding model for EU to fight against Climate Change: Challenge acceptance→Consensus building→Decisions making according to law→Implementation.Challenge acceptance means comprehensive evaluation and prediction of climate change and its hazards to EU countries. While the facts of Climate Change and challenge related are becoming more and more severely, almost all kinds of interest groups and classes in EU have been convinced that they must struggle to fight against Climate Change.Consensus building means utilizing the wisdom of the masses and working out some common opinions about the main objectives and approaches to win the fighting against Climate Change. In EU, this proceeding does not mean debating whether to cope with the challenge or not, but discussing how to cope with it, i.e. adopt which policy maps and anticipate what policy goals.Decisions making according to law means putting the consensus into compulsory or restrictive concrete policies and legislations. The following 3 aspects should be taken into consideration.A. Technical aspect: What kinds of technologies and techniques could be used to help implement the policies and legislations, and what is the potential of these techs to achieve relative policy goals?B. Internal aspect: What and how the feasible measures will be adopted to implement the policies and legislations in such domestic areas as energy, transport and agriculture & forestry?C. Foreign aspect: What foreign policies could be use to achieve EU's goal as a whole in fighting against Climate Change?Implementation means taking all the policies and legislations and measures related to the fighting against Climate Change into effect. It relies mainly on three specific policy tools, i.e. law and market and finance, and disseminates in all kinds of sectors such as energy, transport, agriculture & forestry, emissions reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) other than CO2, adapting capacity construction, etc. This step is the periodical end of the whole process and also the start for another new process. This implies that the effect de facto of this step will feed back to the other three steps, especially the step of decision-making.In the energy sector, the EU is committed to developing renewable energy,increasing energy utilization efficiency and reducing wastage. In the transport sector, the EU makes reducing greenhouse gas emissions from road (cars and trucks) as a key priority of its policy, while struggling to improve the rail and waterway and encourage intermodal transport system. In the agriculture & forestry sector, the EU has been enhancing the protection of soil and forest, integrating them into its sustainable development framework. It also attaches great importance to the emissions reduction of greenhouse gas other than CO2, and emphasizes the adaptation capacity construction recently. On the international level, the EU has different guidelines towards different countries with different development degrees. The aim of EU's foreign climate policies is to urge other countries to fight against Climate Change along with the EU.There are 2 basic principles running through the every step of the whole process above and cherished by all the interest groups and classes in EU. They are legalism and cooperatism, the former being European cultural tradition while the later a new symbol of European culture. The civil societies and environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in EU are concerned with all the steps very deeply and extensively, which is a key factor to the whole process. In effect, legalism and cooperatism are the two cultural backbones in the EU's fighting against Climate Change. They are also two essential lessons from the fighting. Furthermore, in the fighting against Climate Change, EU is adept in using market-oriented schemes, emphasizes the function of financial tools and pays great attention to R&D, all which could be regarded as the essential lessons of EU in the fighting. However, the lessons are not perfect and fit for all the other societies. When studying and learning from the EU's lessons, every country and society will have to stand on its own bottom and integrate the lessons into its own conditions in order to rationally develop the useful and discard the useless.China has got some achievement in fighting against Climate Change so far. However, there are still kinds of shortcomings obviously, such as the disappointing implementation of concerned policies and legislations, the insufficiency of activities of civil societies and environmental NGOs, and the low-level awareness about Climate Change of the public, etc. China needs to stand on its own bottom and start from its own conditions, then study and draw on the lessons of EU, promote cooperation between China and EU in fighting against Climate Change at the same time.