TEXT OF INTERVIEW

SCOTT JAGOW: In Europe today, what could a historic summit. The E.U. wants to cut carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020. Our European correspondent Stephen Beard has more on this from London.

STEPHEN BEARD: The key thing about this meeting is there's a very strong feeling here in Europe that Europe has gotta take the lead. This will create momentum. It'll build up pressure, especially on the U.S. so that all the major industrialized countries, including the U.S., will sign up to this deal at the G8 summit in June.

JAGOW: Now we've talked about this a bit over the past few weeks, but how realistic is it that Europe could actually do this?

BEARD: Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is going to involve some economic pain and the E.U. leaders haven't worked out exactly who and which sectors are going to bear the bulk of the pain. We've had already so many examples of performance falling well short of promise. I mean yesterday we had the E.U.'s energy commissioner admitting that putting a price on carbon so that it pays to cut emissions and it costs money to increase emissions, he admitted that system had been a failure.

JAGOW: Well then going back to what you said originally, you know if there's so much skepticism about whether they can actually do it, why would the U.S. or any other country go along with it?

BEARD: Well that's indeed a very good questions. We have the British government urging the U.S. but only yesterday the British government showing that four out of five and one of the worst and produced a thermal energy. The place was literally full of hot air.

JAGOW: Alright we'll leave it at that for now. Thank you Stephen.

BEARD: Ok Scott.

JAGOW: Our European correspondent Stephen Beard.