Isramart : Norway proposes 40-pct carbon emissions cut by 2020

Isramart news:
OSLO — The Norwegian government said Wednesday that it was prepared to toughen its target for cutting carbon emissions by 2020 to help support efforts to reach a global climate accord.

Oslo said it was prepared to increase its emissions reduction target from 30 percent to 40 percent of their 1990 level by end of the next decade.

The 40-percent target was part of the new political programme presented by the leftist coalition of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who held onto his slim parliamentary majority in the September 14 elections.

One of the major objectives is “the toughening of Norway’s climate goals so that emissions in 2020 are 40 percent less that their level in 1990 which could contribute to an accord on an ambitious international (climate) treaty,” a statement said.

The reduction of heat-trapping greenhouse gases which drive global warming will be a core issue at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December. The conference aims to reach a new global climate accord to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

Norway, the world’s fifth largest exporter of oil, a fossil fuel contributing to global warming, has already set a target of being carbon neutral by 2030.

According to experts, the major industrial countries must reduce their carbon emissions between 25-40 percent by 2020 to limit the increase in global temperatures to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the scientific threshold for dangerous global warming.