Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-10-Speech-4-022"
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"en.20080410.4.4-022"2
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"I would first like to thank the Commission and the Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, for the Green Paper on adapting to climate change. It is a document which all decision-makers and business managers, indeed all Europeans, should read in order to understand the kind of challenges that face us and what we need to do. After all, as many speakers have already pointed out, a great many people will be affected by the changes in climate which we can see coming. Hitherto we have talked a great deal in economic terms in the European debate, but climate change will alter the whole environment of our lives.
A subject to which we have not so far devoted sufficient discussion is health. The World Health Organisation has indicated that 60 000 deaths last year can be linked to climate change. It calls for an entirely different approach to social planning, entirely different technology and huge investment. It may frighten many people, but we must make this investment in order to cope with climate change and technical development and in order to hold our own in competition with other parts of the world. As always in an engineering revolution, there will be winners and losers, but throughout the EU system we are working to ensure that European industry and European workers will be winners in this situation. This will require considerable investment, forward-looking decisions and cooperation across borders. There can be no decisions on transport which do not take climate change into account. There can be no discussion of public health or education without addressing climate change.
One of the most important matters we have begun to deal with is of course water, in Europe and at global level. We have received visits in the committee from representatives of the Maldives, a country where the highest point is just over two metres above current sea level. The Maldives will partially disappear if we cannot solve the climate problem.
It is the poorest countries which will suffer most. I would therefore like to issue a challenge to the Commission: the Solidarity Fund must be boosted and given more resources, and aid from the EU must also focus on climate questions. Otherwise we cannot help the rest of the world, and moreover, we shall not get a good agreement out of the negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009. Thank you."@en1
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