Climate change targets: 'Bold and courageous' or just more hot air? - Telegraph

[Miliband'] statement was hailed as "bold and courageous", yet it amounted to nothing beyond the utterance of some words. This is not to say that there is something inherently wrong with wanting a cleaner environment, simply that announcing ever higher numbers has become something of a political virility test with no obvious connection with the real world, and one that the Conservatives seem happy to go along with.

Mr Miliband said the price to be paid for doing nothing was greater than the cost of acting, though not if it means investment in clean technology dries up as a result. There are so many economic uncertainties that substituting one random and impractical number for another seems precipitate.

Is Europe Backsliding on Climate-Change Targets? - TIME

Is this the moment the European Union's ambitious climate change agenda unraveled? At the end of the two-day E.U. summit in Brussels Thursday, European leaders congratulated one another on their bold bank rescue plans. But the mutual backslapping might have provided perfect cover for a retreat from their long-standing commitment to reduce Europe's overall CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.
...
It may be premature to write off the EU's emissions program altogether. But
if it does crumble over the next two months, the tipping point will have been the moment the E.U. finally got its
act together on saving its troubled banks.