Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-16-Speech-2-095"
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"en.20041116.10.2-095"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to wish Commissioner Wallström every success in her future portfolio. We have enjoyed working with her over the last five years in the environmental portfolio. I would like to thank her for her particular contribution. My good wishes also go to the Dutch presidency as its term comes to an end.
There are those who claim that the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is destined to fail as the rest of the world waits for those nations already taking part to fall short of their obligations and so provide the perfect cover for their decision not to participate in the first place. At the half-way point to the 2012 deadline set under the first Kyoto commitment period, the world is engaging in
rationalisation, hammering nails in the coffin of attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before we even enter the second phase of implementation. The 'I told you so' mentality is one I suggest we cannot afford.
Failure is relative. Failure to meet provisional targets – and my own country, Ireland, is currently 16% behind the target set – is very unfortunate. But failure to act at all would be downright catastrophic.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, an international panel of experts which assesses the scientific, technical, social, and economic aspects of climate change estimates that we need to decrease our emissions of greenhouse gas by 60-80% on 1990 levels in order for our efforts to make an appreciable difference to rising global temperatures. I know there is debate in the scientific community as to whether the models used by the IPCC stand up, and that debate will continue, but the majority of people accept the IPCC modelling and the projections arising from it.
Critics frequently cite the fact that under Kyoto the earth's temperature would only be 0.15°C lower than if we do nothing at all. Scepticism and climate change are two phenomena that have become so closely interlinked in the global debate on the future of our planet, that we are in danger of losing sight of the very real steps that have been taken, under the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms, towards setting a framework for future action to control the impact of human activities on the earth.
To focus too closely on the negligible quantitative effect of Kyoto, in terms of immediate results of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, however, is to miss the point. Kyoto is only a first step towards addressing global warming but it provides a crucial foundation on which future, more comprehensive and effective policies and agreements must be built. It is a prototype for a much more far-reaching arrangement than the present one. The value of the Kyoto Protocol is in that it sets a market-based mechanism to translate environmental protection into economic terms. It puts a tradable price on global warming.
Once properly implemented and extended to include all the other sectors, Kyoto will provide a flexible, market-based mechanism to spread the burden of paying for global warming equitably across all sectors. It would provide a financial incentive for the development of clean technologies that will safeguard the environmental heritage of future generations.
In conclusion, the main obstacle at this point is diplomatic. We must engage in a continuing and vigorous dialogue with our transatlantic partners in the USA and with Russia where the very name of Kyoto has become discredited. Yes, Kyoto has flaws, but only through working together can these shortcomings be ironed out to the benefit of all.
On a European level I welcome the Commission's recent stakeholder consultation and hope that we can make our voice heard at the forthcoming COP 10 conference in which I will be delighted to participate. It is time to banish the notion that the future of climate change policy is coterminous with the Kyoto Protocol. The question, and it is an important one, is what comes after Kyoto?"@en1
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