The window of opportunity for tackling climate change - at both EU and international levels - is still open, but time is running out. This was the thrust of Joint Parliamentary Meeting on "Climate Change: Rising to the Challenge”, co-hosted by the European Parliament and the Portuguese Assembleia da República.

Europe will have to tackle climate change on many fronts, said Jaime Gama, President of the Assembleia da República at the start of a meeting at which MEPs, EU officials, and national representatives are weighing responses to global warming. The EU “needs to ensure security of supply of energy”, but also “to address the challenges of new fuels and new, safer nuclear energy”, whilst at at the same time, the sustainable growth of its economy, he said, adding that Europe also needs to make its voice heard in international fora and to push for a solid UN-level agreement on reducing global emissions after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol is due to expire.

A new industrial revolution

The EU, which is responsible for 14% of worldwide emissions, "should set an example”, said EP President Hans-Gert Pöttering. “We need to prove that it is possible to have high economic growth and, at the same time, to reduce CO2 emissions”, he said. Highlighting the scale and number of changes that are needed to develop clean-energy technologies, he added: “what we are talking about is a new industrial revolution”. Change, he stressed, must follow at the international level. Looking ahead to the UN conference on Climate Change in Bali, the EP President underlined the need to secure “an overall comprehensive commitment" that gets everyone on board. “Any agreement that does not include the United States, China and India", he added, "will run into many difficulties”.

Our approach to climate change is different from that of the United States, noted Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas. Theirs, he said, is a “pledge-and-review” model, which – by way of non-mandatory “aspirational” targets – “guarantees no real solution to the problem”. Winning the US and other countries over to the idea of launching negotiations for a post-Kyoto agreement - and thrashing out what such an agreement should contain - will indeed be the EU's key aim at the Bali conference. Turning to action within the EU, Mr Dimas said that proposals on carbon capture and storage (CCS) and a revision of the Emission Trading Scheme will be at the heart of the Commission's energy and climate change package, to be tabled in December. Replying to a question from member of the Bundestag, the Commissioner said that the December package will also include proposals on Member State burden-sharing in curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Running out of time

“Global temperatures have increased by 0.8 degrees over the last century”, and the Arctic ice cap has “shrunk by more than 20 percent” since 1979, opening the North Sea passage "for the first time in history”, noted oceanographer and climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf, of Potsdam University. Challenging those who doubt the existence of climate change, he opined that “we may have been underestimating the problem”, and stressed that “time is running out.”

As the impact of climate change is already visible, mitigation must go hand in hand with adaptation said Guido Sacconi (PES, IT), chairman of the EP’s Temporary Committee on Climate Change. Highlighting the need for co-operation between national and EU actors, including the EP and national parliaments, Mr Sacconi advocated stepping up efforts to involve the public in the EU campaign against global warming. “We need citizens to be aware of what is going on”, he said.

Switching to a lower carbon-based economy is a matter of urgency for our governments, said Antonio Ramos Preto, of the Assembleia da República. “We have a window of opportunity available now", he added, "but it can close very quickly.”