Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-21-Speech-3-009"
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"en.20080521.3.3-009"2
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Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office, welcome to the European Parliament. What prompted the European Union to set up a Temporary Committee on Climate Change? It was the right approach, to present an overall view of how we, the European Union, intend to deal with this issue. If we want to help at international level to ensure that this issue is kept on the agenda – as Stavros Dimas is successfully doing for the Commission – as the European Union, as the Parliament, we must state what our concept is; in other words, we need to state what our visiting card is on this issue. Ultimately, Europe must show how we are dealing with this issue, and what approach we are adopting in order to encourage other countries and continents to move with us in the same direction. That is why it is important to begin with the scientific aspect of this debate, and that is what we are talking about today.
Focusing on this aspect will never produce an attractive report because it simply deals with the status quo. It is not a matter of horse-trading: giving a bit here, taking a bit there. It is about focusing on the facts. We have brought together these facts in numerous thematic strategies, during which we invited two Nobel Prize laureates to Brussels and Strasbourg. Mr President, you organised an excellent event and delivered a very significant speech on climate change, which was extremely gratifying from my perspective and which encouraged me to redouble my efforts.
We have heard the views of numerous experts from international bodies all over the world, under the excellent chairmanship of my good friend Guido Sacconi who managed matters very well. We were also able to invite some critics, although unfortunately they did not all come, because they do not want to subject their criticism to international scrutiny. Producing criticism in print without being willing to subject it to formal scrutiny is hardly heroic conduct. I would have welcomed the presence of at least one or two critics willing to face up to international debate.
We have read many excellent documents. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was involved, and we also consulted the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the climate conference of the Federal Republic of Germany, and many others, with the result that we now have the facts before us. This is not a combative sort of paper, as some of my friends have occasionally claimed; it is a status report as a basis on which to determine how we should proceed in future. The arguments clearly show that there is a scientific consensus with which we can now progress with our work. There is a consensus on how to assess the anthropogenic influence; that is covered in Article 3. We have sufficient information to state that the target of limiting the global average temperature increase to not more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels in future is important.
What, then, do we need to do in future? In Europe, we need to muster our energy for a new third industrial revolution based on the three pillars of sustainability, namely product sustainability, the social dimension and of course the economic dimension. This is not a burden; it is a massive opportunity which we must develop further as our vision.
One thing is certain: the climate debate is just a minor part of our problem. We must engage in a debate about sustainability. The fact is that in just 500 years, we are squandering energy which took millions of years to create, and we have absolutely no answer to the question of how our children, and our children’s children, will be able to develop their energy sources in future.
That is the great opportunity. We need the courage to be creative. The Stone Age did not end because we no longer had any stones available. Let me tell you, the Stone Age ended, fortunately, because we politicians had courage: courage to seize the future, courage for our children, and courage for this planet of ours."@en1
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