MEPs want acts, not facts, in fight against climate change

STRASBOURG – EU climate policy must be about more than an awareness of scientific facts, say MEPs

Europe's deputies say that meeting today’s environmental challenges must involve more than simply analysing statistics.

Adopting a report on the scientific facts behind climate change, they stressed that more work needs to be done to manage resources and deal with those responsible for environmental damage.

“We’re looking at the tip of the iceberg. What’s under the water is what we need to do about our resources,” said German EPP deputy Karl Heinz-Florenz, author of the report, in a press conference on Wednesday.

“We’re going to have to accept that in a few years we will have a big problem concerning resources in Europe. We need to improve in many areas,” he added.

Italian Socialist MEP Guido Sacconi, chair of parliament’s temporary committee on climate change, echoed the call for more to be done.

“We have to act, we shouldn’t waste time arguing about figures,” he said.

However, in the debate on the report, some MEPs felt that it did not give sufficient acknowledgement to those who questioned the scientific basis of climate change.

German EPP deputy Markus Pieper felt that this made for an unbalanced perspective.

“We cannot simply repress opinion. This is not going to further the cause of the fight against climate change,” he said.

UK Tory deputy Roger Helmer added that despite the scientific evidence in the report, concerns about climate change were exaggerated.

“Climate hysteria is increasingly remote from reality. We need to rethink our policies before they do any more damage,” he said.

However, UK Green MEP Caroline Lucas said that a failure to act on the basis of current scientific evidence was unacceptable.

“To know what we know about climate change and yet fail to act in a commensurate way will amount to nothing less than a crime against future generations,” she said.

Irish EPP MEP Avril Doyle also supported the view that the EU had a duty to take action.

“If we do not take into account the views of the majority of our scientists, it would represent a combustible mixture of arrogance, ignorance and a dereliction of duty,” she said.

Meanwhile, the European commission was strongly criticised for not doing enough to ensure that member states penalised those who damage the environment.

A report by German EPP deputy Hartmut Nassauer was adopted on Wednesday in which the EU encouraged all member states to consider as criminal offences a number of actions which can be proved to be environmentally damaging.

During Wednesday’s press conference, Heinz-Florenz said that despite this new initiative, which will be based on previous environmental directives and concerned only with "major infirngements", the European commission was failing to take the necessary action.

“We can talk about EU criminal law…but the commission is not doing its job. They need to check up on member states. The commission needs to implement what we have decided here,” he said.

“They need to do less and do it better. In this case, the commission is certainly not doing its homework,” he added.

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