13 år sedan
Karl Hallding on the climate negotiations in Durban: "The energy transition should not be seen as a burden"
Politics and UN negotiations are not the drivers of climate change initiatives – private enterprises that see the advantages in taking the lead in ”the green transition” are. This according to Karl Hallding, new program manager at Global Challenge, interviewed on Swedish radio about the climate negotiations in Durban that started this week.
Karl Hallding, who also manages the Stockholm Envrionment Institute’s China Program, suggested that many countries, and particularly China, see energy security as a more pressing concern than climate change – but that this nevertheless encourages a transition that benefits the climate.
The EU sees only the difficulties
Even if China and the U.S. typically get viewed as the villains of climate diplomacy in European policy debate, a significant amount of cooperation on climate issues takes place between the two countries. According to Karl Hallding, Europe has a fundamentally different approach to these issues. ”The European Unions has always been too focused on the problems and sees the energy transition predominantly as a burden. Meanwhile, China and the U.S. see job creation and other opportunities with the new technologies.”
