Connie Hedegaard will be setting out her plans as the new EU Commissioner for Climate Action in London tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon GMT, when she delivers the International Institute for Environment and Development's 2010 Barbara Ward Lecture.

Hedegaard is better known for her previous job: she was the host of last December’s UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, as Denmark’s Minister for Climate and Energy.

That conference famously ended in disarray, with little sign of the ‘fair, ambitious and legally binding targets’ that civil society was demanding, despite Hedegaard’s considerable determination.

But she has not given up the struggle. Bloody but unbowed, just weeks later (10 Feb 2010) she took on a new post as European Commissioner for Climate Action. Will the EU succeed where the UNFCCC failed?

An immediate task facing Hedegaard will be able to influence the EU to adopt a progressive position during the Bonn UNFCCC negotiations, now just three weeks away – despite unpromising signs.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to be retreating from the fray after the frustrations of the Copenhagen process. A report in Der Spiegel supports this view: “[She is] quietly moving away from her goal of a binding agreement on limiting climate change to 2 degrees Celsius. She has also sent out signals at the EU level that she no longer supports the idea of Europe going it alone.” [04/26/2010 Der Spiegel online]

Worse, in the UK, though the 6 May elections gave the Conservative Party an unconvincing win, they could still form a minority government. That’s sad news for climate justice. A recent poll showed that as many as 144 out of the 240 Conservative candidates polled ranked climate change at the tail end of a list of 19 areas of concern.

Even more alarmingly, several members of the Conservatives Shadow Cabinet do not merely downgrade the importance of tackling climate change: they actually deny it includes a human-made component. Extraordinarily, in the intellectual debate about climate change, they are trailing several years behind President George W. Bush. If this is where so many senior Tories are, what are the chances of the UK taking urgent and drastic climate action?

Worse still, the rising fears of a new wave of economic shocks will undoubtedly distract politicians and their voters around Europe from what they see – misguidedly - as a less pressing crisis arising from climate change.

Under these unpromising conditions, what can Connie Hedegaard do to persuade Europe’s political leaders to make the urgent changes that are required?

She will be setting out her plans on Tuesday, 11 May, when she delivers the 2010 Barbara Ward Lecture for International Institute for Environment and Development' (IIED).

The event will be held at the Commonwealth Club, 25 Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5AP, from 1pm UK time (that’s 12 noon GMT). There will be a light lunch before the lecture, from 12.15, and coffee from 2.30 pm.

RSVP to attend the event to kate.lines@iied.org or telephone 0207 388 2117

But if you can’t attend in person, don’t worry! You can attend virtually – and put your questions and comments forward.

  • IIED and OneClimate have joined forces to webcast the event, from 1.0 - 2.30 BST/12.0-2.30 GMT, so that:
  • You can post your questions during the event (IIED hopes to allow time for answers at the end of the lecture.
  • The webcast will be posted oneclimate.net
  • You can embed the video on your own web site - see oneclimate.net to find out how (it’s easy).

Once the live webcast is done, we will keep a copy of the footage available for you and your friends to view.

This is your opportunity to interact with the most powerful climate negotiator in Europe. Don’t miss it!

 

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