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Global deal struck on1 airline emissions
By Marc Braibant AFP
October 6, 2013, 12:08 am TWN
| MONTREAL -- A first-ever global deal on curbing2 the airline industry's rising carbon emissions was agreed to on Friday, the International Civil Aviation3 Organization said, though hammering out the details could take years. The full agreement is not scheduled to take effect until 2020 but the most contentious4 issues have been resolved, officials said, as the ICAO's full assembly met behind closed doors in Montreal. The deal "is an historic milestone for air transport and for the role of multilateralism5 in addressing global climate challenges," ICAO Council President Roberto Kobeh Gonzalez said in a statement. Air transport "now becomes the only major industry sector to have a multilateral global market-based mechanism agreement in place to help govern future greenhouse gas emissions," he added. Leading up to the vote, China and India had joined the United States and Russia in balking6 at a European Union push for a carbon levy7 on flights within 3 years. But at midday8 (1600 GMT), after some 1,400 delegates representing 170 member states voted on the executive committee9's resolution, officials said the plan had been passed and details of the accord would follow. "The good news is (in) having concluded a general agreement that includes China and India," a diplomat involved in the negotiations told AFP. Aviation accounts for around 3% of global CO2 emissions but the ICAO forecasts that by 2050 emissions will have risen between 4 and 6 times the levels they were in 2010. Last year, the EU suspended10 its CO2 Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for intercontinental11 flights, after facing a storm of criticism. Under the EU's ill-fated12 arrangement, airlines flying in EU airspace were required to buy pollution credits to cover 15% of their CO2 emissions for the entire flight, wherever it originated. |
1 struck on: 襲擊、擊中 2 curb: 抑制、遏止 3 aviation: 航空 4 contentious: 有爭議的 5 multilateralism: 多邊主義的 6 balk: 阻礙 7 levy: 徵收 8 midday: 中午 9 committee: 委員會 10 suspend: 暫停 11 intercontinental: 州際 12 ill-fated: 命運多舛的 |
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