EUobserver.com: EU targets Beijing Olympics on climate change

re: "EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission and the German EU presidency are hoping an EU push on climate change targets at next week's EU summit could lead to an international agreement on energy efficiency to be announced at next year's Beijing Olympic games. / "If we are lucky this could be prepared by the EU this spring. It could then be readied in the framework of the G8 by the German presidency and it could lead next year to an announcement at the Olympic Games in Beijing," senior European Commission official Helmut Schmitt von Sydow said in Brussels on Thursday (1 March). / EU leaders meeting in Brussels on 8 March are set to endorse commission proposals to cut EU energy use and CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020 in a move designed to get other major energy players, such as the US and China, to take steps in what some experts describe as EU "unilateral disarmament" in a Cold War on climate. / German chancellor Angela Merkel, a former environment minister, has thrown her weight behind making the spring EU summit into a climate change summit, despite industry concerns. "It will cost our industry a lot, but if we do nothing the cost will be even higher," Mr Von Sydow said at a debate organised by Brussels-based think-tank CEPS. / The need to involve China in any meaningful climate fight is underlined by oil industry figures, which show that while today the US consumes 11 million barrels a day (mbd), the EU 9 mbd and China 3 mbd, by 2030 the figures will be US 15 mbd, the EU 13 mbd and China 12 mbd..."...