Starting in 2012, airlines with flights to the EU will have to pay for certificates to emit CO2. But the United States has balked at the expensive plan. Their resistance threatens to spark a majar trade dispute.
Does Europe really want to dictate an idea for climate protection to the rest of the world? That's the question being asked by US leaders in Washington, who are throwing their support behind a protest by the American airline industry against an EU climate rule.
The new regulation comes into force in January 2012 and requires airlines to buy certificates for carbon emissions to take off or land at European Union airports. The EU will sell the certificates and allow them to be re-sold. It's a way of bringing the airline industry under the EU's emissions-trading scheme, the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), which has applied to European industry since 2005.
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