EurActiv.com - an independent media portal dedicated to EU affairs - reports about difficulties that countries from Eastern and Central Europe meet in reaching EU Climate Targets.

The EU's Eastern European newcomers, who still need to catch up with the rest of the Union in terms of economic and social development, face an uphill battle to attain the 'climate targets' laid out in the bloc's 'Europe 2020' strategy, a round-up of articles from the EurActiv media network reveals.
The EU has adopted an overall target of producing 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, broken down into different targets for each country and taking as a basis their level in 2005. (...)
It was recently decided that the burden of cutting greenhouse gas emissions will be shared by means of a complicated mechanism, compensating Eastern European countries for their earlier efforts to cut down CO2 emissions (during the period following the collapse of their heavy industries after the fall of communism) with allowances to be auctioned.

The rest of the texts informs about the situation in individual countries: Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary.

The floods and the heat wave we have had recently have once again showed how pressing the issue is for all of us. Old and new EU members, and the aspiring ones. For, as someone said, it is distorted perspective to ask how the environment will survive. The question is how we will survive.

Photo credit - from the story discussing climate impact on water resources.