Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-21-Speech-3-015"
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"en.20080521.3.3-015"2
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"Mr President, if the interim report from our Committee on Climate Change does no more than state the obvious, that is no bad thing. For it confirms, in black and white, what most of us have acknowledged for some time. The science of climate change is incontrovertible. Permafrost and ice caps are melting, sea-levels and temperatures rising, largely due to human activity. Failure to act now means humankind will hurtle towards a tipping point from which there is no return.
The deadlines for climate policy are set not by the European Union, nor by the world community: they are set by nature. And the bottom line is that – despite commitments in Kyoto – global greenhouse gas emissions are growing faster than ever before, up by a quarter since 1990. Some scientists say CO
concentrations have already gone too far. All agree the window of opportunity open to us to stabilise emissions and limit the rise in temperature to two degrees above pre-industrial levels will close within seven years.
Democracies are run by crisis management. Serious problems are often not tackled until they have to be tackled, and as Karl-Heinz Florenz points out in this excellent report we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions not by 20%, but possibly by up to 40%, depending on what deal can be made with third countries at the Copenhagen talks next year.
There are positive signs from the other big polluters, China and the USA. Beijing showed a new-found willingness to negotiate at the UN summit in Bali and all three US presidential candidates are committed to tackling climate change. What we must do – in the absence of further evidence, and with the resources at hand – is to approve the Commission’s climate change package, and I salute the work that my colleagues Lena Ek, Chris Davis and Vittorio Prodi have done in this area.
We must also redouble our efforts to promote clean energy – and the amazing thing is this: we know how. Generating power from the desert sun, as a supplement to sources of renewable energy here in Europe, could speed up the process of cutting CO
emissions at a stroke. Indeed, satellite-based studies by the German Aerospace Centre have shown us that, using less than 0.3% of the desert area of the Middle East and North Africa, enough high-voltage electricity can be generated to supply current and future demand in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. It is not rocket science. It has been done for 20 years in California. Plants are now being built in Spain and Morocco to do the same.
If we could summon the drive and the determination, the guts and the grit, we could make the shift from oil while providing jobs, drinking water and better infrastructure for those bearing the brunt of climate change. We could combat climate change without having to turn off the lights.
Our aim should be to put Europe’s money where its mouth is, to invest money in high-voltage solar thermal power generation and political capital in the human relations across the Mediterranean Sea to make it possible. We could find no better ammunition for use in negotiations with the UN to get a progressive international agreement in Copenhagen."@en1
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