Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-29-Speech-3-026"
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"en.20001129.6.3-026"2
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"Madam President, industry and transport cause the earth’s atmosphere to warm up artificially. If this global warming continues, then part of the territory of the EU Member States will become sea or desert. We will need to drastically alter our economy if we are to keep the world and Europe habitable on a permanent basis. Parliament has recently pronounced itself in favour of a number of steps that will take us in the right direction.
The European position during the climate conference, which ended – and evidently broke down – in The Hague last Saturday, was characterised by two sharply conflicting views. One view is that we should stick closely to the 1997 agreements in order to reduce emissions by a generous 5%, as compared with 1990. It is felt that we should now honour the Kyoto commitments already entered into, and that a willingness to compromise with America represents a betrayal of Europe’s commitment.
The other view is that the Kyoto obligations have never been feasible because there is too much opposition from America, Japan, and Australia, and the only way to reach an international agreement now, would be to reduce their commitments to take action. Creative accountancy would enable us to give the impression that they have already fulfilled a substantial number of their obligations.
The European Union made an error of judgement where the second view is concerned, because the green Environment Ministers of France and Germany were not prepared to forget Kyoto. We will still need to find a compromise of this kind at the follow-up conference due to take place in May 2001, in Bonn. My group favours the first view.
It is important for Europe to stick with a position taken up previously, even though it means that the United States will not be in a position to subscribe to an agreement of this kind for the period of the Bush administration. Taking the long-term view, it is important that we convince the American public of the dangers of the do-nothing option, rather than agreeing a compromise with our opponents.
The United States produce the largest amount of pollution per capita. As yet, American public opinion has not given a great deal of credence to the notion that the deserts will expand and there will be an increase in hurricanes. They have a high standard of living over there and the price of petroleum products is low. The people feel that any actual changes will be to the detriment of industry and consumers. It is therefore unlikely that an international agreement would now be able to gain approval from the US Congress.
Finally, the Third World is only in the very early stages of industrialisation. Poverty has forced these countries to sell their CO2 emission rights to rich countries, which want to use them to reduce their own obligations. At the end of the day, these countries will not give up their rights to progress. The emission of greenhouse gases will increase dramatically as a result. That is why we need to keep these realities in mind in the follow-up to the climate conference. A compromise cannot mean forgetting what was agreed in Kyoto."@en1
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