Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-11-21-Speech-3-356-000"
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"Mr President, I will be brief. You will all know from what I said earlier that I agree very much with the sense of urgency, and I see we are getting much additional evidence that we did not actually need – although I hope it will help the world to try to act more speedily, for that is what we need.
Mr Jørgensen said we could not negotiate with nature. Unfortunately that is so, although I think it might be easier than the negotiations in Doha with 194 countries. There have been so many wake-up calls that the question is, do we really need any more? Personally I hope that what President Obama said last week at his first press conference after having been re-elected President, when he admitted – and he used the word ‘admit’ – that the US had not been doing enough on climate, means he will now change that. I hope that in Doha we will start to see signs of that being reflected when it comes to international negotiation.
Corinne Lepage asked about innovative financing. Here I would refer to this month’s Ecofin Council conclusions, of 13 November, when aviation and shipping revenues were mentioned, as were carbon markets: so there actually are some alternative sources of revenue. Last year in Durban, we established a new market mechanism and we hope now that it can come into action. I strongly agree that we need innovative sources to generate the kind of amounts we need.
To echo Mr Eickhout, what will the EU say about financing? I hope that when we come to Doha, on behalf of the Commission, I will have an adopted, agreed multiannual financial framework (MFF) so that I can point to the fact that there is substantial new money for climate action, for access to energy and for many of these things, with a particular focus on Africa – a point that was mentioned by Mr Eickhout. What I cannot guarantee is what will come from the various Member States but I know that, last year in Durban, some of them – Germany, for instance, Denmark and others, and I think the UK too – indicated they are now ready to come up with more financing for 2013. I was told I could make that point in Council. I think Mr Eickhout will not be surprised if I say I have tried to make that point pretty clearly many times, so I hope it will work out.
Finally, many of you have mentioned that Europe should show leadership: should lead by example through what we do ourselves. I must say that I am quite proud of the pile of proposals from the Commission that we have at this stage here in Parliament, and also on the table for the Council. To mention just a few, they include the back-loading proposal, the carbon market report with the structural options for the carbon market, the LULUCF (land use, land use change and forestry) proposal that Mr Arsenis mentioned, the Cars regulation and the F-Gas Regulation; and we had the proposal for a 20 % climate mainstreaming of the entire MFF.
I tell you, this is no small thing. It is a new way of thinking – if it actually gets through. The Energy Efficiency Directive has been adopted but it is now very much up to the Member States to actually implement it. We also have the Energy Taxation Directive. So there is no question of our not providing the initiatives, but we now need to get them through our various institutions so we can incorporate them into law.
In these final seconds I would also like to highlight the fact that, in the Commission’s work programme for next year, we have announced that we will prepare a 2030 initiative on both climate and energy, so I hope we can have some useful discussions about the target we will need for 2030.
My very last point is that I know some will say ‘Yes, but this is costly and we have an economic crisis’. But what the US has just experienced with Hurricane Sandy is merely one example of what we will see increasingly, and further proof that continuing with ‘business as usual’ carries a very high price tag. The droughts we saw in the US this summer, the flooding in many areas of the world: this is what it takes to convince people that, yes, the green transition does not come for free, but in the end it pays off, even economically and growth-wise, compared to simply continuing with ‘business as usual’. The more people realise that, the better off we will be in this discussion.
Doha is not going to be an easy conference but we actually managed to get very substantial things out of Durban despite all the predictions. I hope that Doha can deliver some new progress and keep us on track to construct the international agreement. Although it can never stand alone, we need it, and Doha will be the next stepping stone."@en1
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