Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-10-Speech-2-175"
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"en.20050510.22.2-175"2
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".
Mr President, Mr Schmit, Commissioner, it is true – climate policy matters not only to the European Union, but also to the world as a whole, and attention to that policy is for that reason a global task.
Just by way of a final observation, why is there no longer any reference to agriculture in all this? By this, I do not mean punishments for this sector – that is the Greens’ policy, which I have always thought misguided – but to motivating it. Nowhere is it written that farmers must plant only root crops, cereals, rape or vines; they could equally well grow genetically or biologically modified plants that absorb large quantities of CO2 and return it to the atmosphere only in small quantities when burned later on. Here too, then, there are lots of opportunities for the future and scope for being imaginative.
Commissioner, I would urge both you and the President-in-Office of the Council to be pro-active and optimistic when tackling this issue, so that we may be able, for our children’s sake, to take the necessary steps at long last towards making this continent safe where CO2 emissions are concerned.
Before we press on with discussion of the Kyoto issue, though, Europe should ask itself what targets it has set itself and which of them it has achieved. Or perhaps the other way round: which targets must we set ourselves for the future, and by what means can we achieve them? Have we, in the whole Kyoto debate, managed to involve those countries that have not signed the Kyoto Protocol? Morally, at any rate, the Kyoto treaty is binding upon all of us, for we all share in responsibility for the policies we adopt with regard to this planet’s climate.
It is for that reason that I would like the Council and the Commission to tell us how they are preparing for this new step post-2012, and whether they are willing to take the initiative in finding new shoulders to bear the burdens of Kyoto. Are you, then, looking for other partners and participants in this process as a whole? The countries I have in mind are, of course, India, China, Brazil and the United States.
If this House believes that this or that country can be induced to make progress by threatening it with a court summons, then it is, in my view, making a mistake. Only if all the arguments are in your favour and beyond reasonable doubt should you haul someone before the courts. It strikes me as preferable by far, and as a more promising course of action, to get these countries into a situation in which they have to make a move, and to motivate them to stop sulking and making excuses for each other, and instead to say, ‘yes, we do have a shared responsibility’.
Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office, there is another question I would like to revisit, and it is that of to what degree you are able and willing not only to involve other countries and actively engage in dialogue with them, but also other sectors as well. I am thinking, for example, of transport policy, the heating of private homes ...
Oh yes, that is something we have long been calling for, but you have never paid any attention. All these sectors, then, need to be involved. There is no doubt that there will be trouble; that is why, when I told the German minister for the environment – who is one of your party-political allies – that he should ask for that, his reply was that he could not do that, for if he did, he would lose his seat in no time. It is precisely for that reason, though, that he should do it, so, Commissioner, which sectors do you want to include?
I also believe that we have to have the courage to tackle heating in private homes – along with all the other things in our homes that give off heat and account for over one third of all CO2 emissions. How far are you prepared to go in highlighting new ways of dealing with this?
The examples are very simple, but, rather than trying to apply one standard to all, what we have to give the partners who will join us in Kyoto is targets, leaving it to them to find their own ways of reaching them. Who, after all, would have believed that the Federal Republic of Germany, to take one example, would, by means of a well thought-out waste policy, have saved 21 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent over the last 15 years? We can, though, do a lot if we are willing to motivate these countries to get stuck into this."@en1
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