Could France and the UK score a climate win today?

The embattled leaders of two of Europe’s powerhouses are sitting down today. With current headlines dominated by scandals and political tit-for-tats, they each need something big and bold to help them emerge from this meeting with positive momentum for the months ahead, and a new alliance to pull Europe’s climate ambitions up by the bootstraps could be just the tonic.

British PM Cameron and French President Hollande are facing stiff opposition at home and flagging legacies. President Hollande has been embroiled in an affair scandal and has the lowest approval rating of any French president ever. And the UK PM is trying to fend off rebellions from his own party on immigration and other tricky issues. They’re also both suffering from climate change in action -- meteorologists have just said it’s the wettest January for 100 years in the UK, and large swathes of France and the UK have been underwater for weeks.

Both leaders, and many of their voters, understand the scientific evidence which points to an accelerating climate crisis. Last week, over 220,000 Avaaz members from the UK, France and elsewhere in Europe sent personal messages to Commission President Barroso, calling for an ambitious European climate plan, including a carbon reduction target of 50%, binding renewable energy targets, and new energy efficiency goals. The aim was to influence Europe’s climate ambitions from now until 2030.

Unfortunately the Commission published a white paper with just a 40% target. This number, the product of political jockeying in Brussels, and is even below what the Commission’s own analysis suggested would be the economically optimal goal for unleashing a wave of green technology and job creation.

But the Commission doesn't have the last word -- it’s now up to European governments to lock the EU’s climate commitments in the next eight weeks. Our best hope is that the three major players -- the UK, France and Germany -- treat the Commission’s proposal as a floor not a ceiling. So today’s meeting is a vital first step to securing that leadership, and Germany and France then meet on February 19th.

The UK and France have successfully worked together before -- the Channel Tunnel is a great example of what they can achieve when they put their minds to it -- and now it’s time to do so again. If we’re going to leave a world to our children and grandchildren without increasingly violent storms, disruption to food (and wine!) supply and rising sea levels, we need an ambitious agreement next time the world negotiates a global climate treaty, which just happens to be in Paris 2015. Today, if Cameron and Hollande seize their meeting to agree on 50% cuts for Europe, they can score a big climate win and set Paris up for success.

For one thing, the colors are much more distinct in SoHo. They’re brighter. Perhaps that’s a reflection on the people living here. But for many of the cast-iron buiildings that give SoHo it’s unmistakable character, the reason for their bright coloring is actually pretty obvious: whenever you construct anything from wrought iron, it’s going to look like, well, wrought iron.

So the colors of SoHo as they’re known, or at least as they ought to be known, the colors that are just a street photographers dream come true (where else can you find so many amazing backdrops?), are actually the result of many, many coats of bright paints. And they light up a photo in ways even a flash cannot.