EU Stunned By GOP Candidates' Stances On Climate, Hint @ Trade Conflict On Issue Down The Road

[hatrack]

Concerns are growing in Brussels that persistent denial of human-caused global warming among Republican presidential hopefuls could damage EU-US relations and even spark a trade conflict.

All the leading challengers for the White House have staked out positions on global warming that defy the international scientific consensus, causing what Thomas Legge, a climate officer for the German Marshall Fund, called “exasperation” in Brussels.

Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in September she was “shocked that the political debate in the US is so far away from the scientific facts.” “When you hear American presidential candidates denying climate change, it's difficult to take,” she said.

If a Republican president disrupted the EU's inclusion of aviation in the EU’s Emissions Trading System, or its default values ascribed to oil from tar sands, Jo Leinen, the chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, called for “a reaction that would affect transatlantic trade.”

EDIT

http://www.euractiv.com/climate-environment/us-republicans-stir-transatlantic-tensions-climate-change-news-510124

[jpak]

1. I would suggest that it is the GOP candidates that are "stunned"

yup