Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-28-Speech-3-394-000"
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"en.20110928.23.3-394-000"2
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"Mr President, I believe that the document that we have tabled is very balanced. However, I would also like to express my disappointment that apparently we are conducting a nuclear debate here. The problem facing the world is not whether or not to have nuclear power. Let us address the real problems and not spend time discussing whether or not we need nuclear power.
One real problem is water. The Earth may indeed be 70% covered with water – after all, it is known as the blue planet – but only 3% of that is effectively available as fresh water. To illustrate this, let us say that this part of Parliament here is the land mass, and the rest here is the oceans – but only one row of seats here consists of the fresh water that people are competing for.
The fact is that today one billion people are already without water. It is also a fact that water consumption is increasing at twice the rate of the world’s population. That is one of the biggest challenges that we face.
Above all, let us not forget that at present water requirements are mainly taken from fossil reserves. This means that if these reserves do not keep being replenished they will be lost. To give you an example: in Beijing the water table is dropping by half a metre a day. I believe that this in fact shows very clearly how great the pressure on these reserves is.
We really need to come up with some answers here, and these answers must be on both supply and demand sides. On the demand side, agriculture faces a major challenge. Worldwide it currently consumes around 93% of the available water, but around 50% of this available water is simply lost through pipelines, conduits and evaporation. We need to do something about this using modern technology. Likewise, daily consumption: a sustainable level would be around 25 litres of water per day, such as is consumed in South Africa. In Europe our consumption is around ten times that level. We should therefore give consideration to what we can do about this too.
We also need to take action on the supply side, however. In other words, we need to think about how we can use modern technology to make water available. Let us work together on this – and please can we concentrate on the real problems, not on the issue of whether or not to have nuclear power."@en1
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