Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-13-Speech-2-112"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20070213.16.2-112"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs |
member; Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee (2004-09-15--2009-07-13)3,3
|
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, representatives of the Council and the Commission, I would like to start by congratulating the Commission on having stood firm in the argument over the national allocation plans for CO2 trading, and on having at least confounded expectations by correcting Germany’s national allocation plan.
I am disconcerted to see that the deal done over the reduction targets for CO2 from cars, evidently as part of a bigger deal, did not come out the way the Commission had wanted it to, and would like to take this opportunity to point out that one thing that is ignored in such CO2 deals – of the kind that are currently being struck between the Member States, the Commission and the Council – is the fact that the targets we have set ourselves are not set by man; rather, the goal of stopping the earth getting more than 2 degrees warmer is set by Nature.
If we, in these trade-offs between various national and industrial interests, keep on disregarding a target set at Kyoto, then we will, I think, in the foreseeable future no longer actually be able to assert that we are pursuing an ambitious climate protection policy.
As we Greens see it, the energy package and the goal of 20% CO2 reduction across Europe may well be ambitious, but they no longer bear any relation to the overarching objective of doing something to counteract global warming. If we really do remain stuck on this 20%, we can once and for all say goodbye to the idea of being able to have a positive influence on global warming, that is to say, of being able to reduce it. We have just heard that, if we were to stick at 20%, the earth would get warmer by 4 or 5 degrees, in other words, that the adverse predictions of climate change would then turn out to be much worse.
All I can do as I stand here is to appeal once more to the Brussels Energy Summit to stop cutting deals around reduction percentages and at last put into effect what the Commission has put on the table. In my view, the most important part of this energy package has to do with energy efficiency and savings, and I would again ask the Commission to get back to what was put before this House last autumn – which is not that long ago – in the shape of the energy action plan. Here, too, there must be less discontinuity. At the time, it was taken for granted that the right target for Europe was to reduce energy consumption. Today, the idea is firmly enshrined in the energy package that Europe’s consumption of energy will continuously increase. It follows that there are many corrections to be made.
I want to add something about nuclear policy, for I know that there are many countries in which great hopes are placed in it. I think that Europe-wide checks are overdue as a means of ascertaining whether the scandalous security culture of which we get repeated reports from the Swedish nuclear power station at Forsmark is a uniquely Swedish problem or whether it might be the case that, over the course of decades in which atomic energy has been being used, this decay in the security culture has become a universal problem as a consequence of such things as reductions in staffing. This is now the third time that I have risen to protest that Forsmark has as yet not been discussed at the European level, and the reason why I am being so forceful about it here and now is that I gather that Euratom is going to lend the money for the building of a new nuclear power station in Belene, concerning which negotiations are proceeding behind the scenes. That would be a first, with Atomstroyexport funding a power station in the European Union with European money, which will enable people to act as if there were a renaissance in nuclear power. I do believe, though, that the fact of the matter is that this industry is in a very bad state, not only from the point of view of security, but also in economic terms."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples