Brussels, 08/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's temporary committee on climate change, chaired by Guido Sacconi (PES, Italy), acted as a sounding box for divergent approaches between the EU, big emerging economies and the United States by giving the podium to international experts on protecting the climate post-2012. These divergences will have to be ironed out in order to ensure the success of the Bali conference on 3-14 December 2007 where the United Nations will launch negotiations on the post-Kyoto period. The meeting was the second in a series of six being organised by the temporary committee from now until March 2008. It also enabled the European Parliament to demonstrate its determination to act as an exchange platform and its commitment to a determined global policy to combat global warming, along with binding objectives.
Hans-Gert Pottering, President of the European Parliament, set the stage when he commented that climate change cannot be reduced to an exclusively environmental issue, and neither can it be reduced to a question of development or a purely technological question. Climate change has a geopolitical and international security component and therefore covers all aspects of life - the ecosystem, health, production methods and security. The impact of climate change spreads very wide and into the long-term, and fighting it is a common sense imperative but also an imperative in terms of justice towards future generations. Hence the urgent need, he added, to find an over-arching, international and binding solution. Pottering said the climate change meeting among MEPs and national parliamentarians in Brussels on 1 and 2 October, where they had debated greenhouse gas emission reducing strategies, focussing on the building sector and renewable energy, had been a precious first step towards the creation of international parliamentary consensus on combatting global warming. John Ashton, special climate change representative at the Foreign Office in the UK, said the central question was what needed to be done to build a global economy that had to reach zero emissions by the end of the century. He said people were far from understanding energy requirements and had to start by getting clear about this. Even if governments set emissions targets, he said businesses had a major role to play because most important decisions are in fact taken by boards of managers and the debate tends to focus on decisions taken by flows of private capital.
The ambassador for Japan's mission to the EU, Takikazu Kazamura, argued for a flexible, diversified, post-2012 system involving all main greenhouse gas emission producers and balancing climate protection with economic growth. Speaking for China, Ronglai Zhong from China's representation office to the EU, said common but differentiated responsibilities had to be decided at global level, introducing a universal mechanism for the transfer of clean energy and adding climate targets to sustainable development policies and into the Millennium Development Goals. He said China had already been hugely successful in combatting climate change and pledged to continue restructuring its economy in order to promote green technology and cut CO2 emissions, saying that China would reach the 10% target for renewable energy in 2012 and 16% by 2020. On behalf of the United States, which backs an approach of investing in clean energy rather than setting emissions reduction targets, Boden Gray, US Ambassador to the EU, said that economic growth, energy security and climate change had to be considered as part of an integrated approach. He said the United States was placing its hopes on developing carbon capture and storage technology. Yves De Boer, executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, swept aside suggestions of a failed summit in Bali raised by MEP Chris Davies (ALDE, UK), saying that it if proved possible to get developing countries on board by helping them achieve sustainable development, increase their investment capacity and cut their CO2 emissions, it would be a success. Chairing the debate, MEP Satu Hassi (Greens, Finland) said the best way the EU could encourage other countries in the international negotiations was to turn words into action. (an)