Kyoto targets within reach – but “more ambitious” cuts needed
Speaking in the debate in Strasbourg, the rapporteur Karl-Heinz FLORENZ (EPP-ED, DE) said: "The climate change problem is both a challenge and an opportunity (to develop new technologies, create new jobs):we need a third industrial revolution and additional studies "to dispel any remaining doubts. In the future we need to be bale to do twice as much with a litre of fuel than we do now, we have to increase energy efficiency. now comes the difficult part: addressing the facts mentioned in this report."
Committee Chairman Guido SACCONI (PES, IT) referred to the IPCC report and said: "This is not [simply] a current of thought, the consensus [on climate change] verges on 100%"... This is "unprecedented in scientific history" and climate change is here, here to stay. As this report and the climate change package show, it's not only the earth's climate that is changing, the political climate has changed, as well."
Current research, according to the report, shows "the risk of serious impact on our planet if measures are not taken swiftly" to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Keeping this in mind, warn MEPs, existing climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices will be "insufficient to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions over the next decades". The level of global GHG emissions "must be reduced by 50% to 85% compared to 2000 to avoid serious risks", they emphasise. Although most EU Member States are making "good or even excellent progress" in their efforts to comply with their burden-sharing targets – thus "raising the likelihood that the EU will reach its Kyoto target by 2012" – they will have to reduce emissions "in a more ambitious way" to meet long-term EU targets.
In as much as they reiterate their commitment to the EU's objective of limiting the global temperature increase to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, MEPs believe that efforts to curb emissions should aim at staying "well below the 2°C target". Such a level of warming, they conclude, "would already heavily impact on our society"
Something for the sceptics
Although MEPs acknowledge that scientific progress "has always been marked by uncertainties," they regard the science of climate change "as sufficiently settled" and criticise "scientifically unsubstantiated efforts to portray the results of studies into the causes and effects of climate change as doubtful, uncertain or questionable". The underlying causes of global warming, they affirm elsewhere, "are predominantly man-made."
Wanted: more research on biofuels’ environmental impact
Finally, the text calls for "additional research into the impact of the policy of promoting biofuels and their effects on the increase of deforestation, the expansion of cultivated land and world food supplies".
