Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-04-Speech-3-024"
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"en.20090204.3.3-024"2
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"Mr President, I add my thanks to Mr Florenz for his report but I think, amidst all the congratulations to the rapporteur and to the committee for its work, we need to face some cold facts: the EU is still doing too little, too late.
I do not expect to be popular for saying so, but we need to be measuring the EU’s progress not against what other countries are doing, but against what needs to be done. Against that measure we are still failing.
We are failing in not bringing sufficient ambition to this debate. The latest science tells us we need to be reducing emissions by around 9% year on year. The targets set out in this report and in the EU’s climate package are simply not ambitious enough.
We are failing in not bringing enough urgency to this debate. If we are not well on the way to a zero-carbon economy in the next eight to ten years we will have lost the opportunity to have halted the worst of climate change.
We are failing in not being consistent. Today, we speak of renewables and energy efficiency. Yesterday, a majority in this House adopted the Laperrouze report which proudly upheld the role of coal in Europe.
We are failing in giving the impression that the climate change debate is all about giving things up, about doing without things. We need to get much better at showing real political leadership and demonstrating that action on climate change will bring us a better quality of life. It is not about shivering around a candle in a cave: it is about a future that can be more positive and attractive than today’s.
So I commend to you the idea of adopting a green new deal for Europe, a way of addressing both the economic crisis and the climate crisis, with a major investment in energy efficiency and renewables, to create millions of new green jobs in Europe.
But that is not about kick-starting economic growth in a ‘business as usual’ direction. It is about an urgently-needed transition not to a Europe based on the ever-increasing consumption of natural resources, but to a steady-state economy for Europe; not more aggregate quantitative growth, but real qualitative development. That debate urgently needs to be begun, and the EU is very well placed to start it."@en1
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