Green lawmakers in the European Parliament have lashed out against a draft motion tabled by centrist MEPs that suggested declaring a climate emergency in Europe, tabling their own motion in response to what they denounced as a “PR-stunt”.
All major political parties have now tabled competing resolutions after the chairman of the European Parliament’s environment committee, Pascal Canfin, tabled a motion last week calling for a climate emergency to be declared in Europe.
The motion, endorsed by Canfin’s centrist Renew Europe group, was scheduled to be voted on Thursday at the European Parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg.
But with five competing motions now on the table, it is unclear whether any one of them will be voted at all.
“I appeal on the responsibility of all lawmakers. This is not a partisan issue,” Canfin said on Monday as he addressed lawmakers in Strasbourg. “This is a question of collective responsibility. We must vote, as others have done, on the climate and environmental emergency.”
Others see it differently, however.
“Our house is on fire,” said Michael Bloss, a German MEP from the Greens political group. “The science is clear and the facts overwhelming. That is why it is right to declare the European climate emergency,” he said.
“But words alone are not enough. The declaration of a climate emergency must be followed by action,” Bloss said, warning that “the climate emergency must not degenerate into a pure PR-stunt”.
On Friday (22 November), the Greens tabled their own resolution, calling on the EU to raise its emissions reduction target to a 65% cut by 2030, up from the 50-55% currently envisaged by the incoming European Commission of Ursula von der Leyen. The leftist GUE faction raised the stakes even further, calling for a 70% emission cut by 2030.
Renew Europe’s resolution did not include targets although Canfin told EURACTIV last week he would defend a 55% target for 2030 as a minimum.
The MEP chairing the European Parliament’s environment committee has called on the Assembly to declare climate emergency at the next plenary session in November. “It would be important to do it at that time,” he told EURACTIV in a wide-ranging interview.
For their part, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), the largest faction in the EU assembly, has tabled a motion calling for Europe to declare climate “urgency” instead of “emergency.”
The reason, according to one EU Parliamentary source, is that the German translation of climate emergency has a negative connotation meaning all hope is lost.
Read rest at Euractiv
Only three countries in Europe are on track to meet their Paris Treaty pledges. It makes no sense to adopt more ambitious goals when the current one isn’t being achieved.
There is indeed a “climate emergency.” If most nations were to significantly reduce their emissions, and the world didn’t get significantly warmer, the climate change movement would take credit. However, as it stands emissions are going to continue to rise, and world isn’t going to get significantly warmer. Given enough time that will discredit this religion. That is the emergency.
They can always build 25,000 nuclear reactors. Who really do you think is behind the funding of this new religion?
How can so many supposedly intelligent people be so clueless.
Do the math – wind and solar is currently only 1% of total global energy supply.
World energy growth is 2% P.A. – if we were to reproduce the last 20 years of wind and solar construction – each and every year from now onward – we would barely keep up with demand.
To meet a 2050 target means building one 1000Mw nuclear power somewhere in the world each and every day between now and 2050.
It’s not going to happen.
And all this to solve a problems that does not exist – other than in seriously flawed computer models – unfit for such policy decisions.
The world has lost its mind.
This is what happens when science becomes religion and our unscientifically schooled politicians and press corps can’t tell the difference between real science and what is nothing more than a rain dance and ritual sacrifice (of our hard won standard of living) at the altar of Gaia to absolve us of our ecological sins.
Excellently expressed. It is all a kind of revival of Rousseau, and the noble savage. Proper concern and respectful relationship with the planet which produced us (mostly out of carbon and water!) is obviously much needed. A hysterical doomsday computer based apocalyptic religion is not. Least of all from politicians and “celebrities” who know next to nothing about climatology and geophysics, but just want to be seen to be “correct”. No wonder Jung warned, at the end of a long life exploring the human psyche and predicament warned of coming psychic epidemics and “political delusional systems”. None of these fanatics has even looked at the actualities and what their demands would actually do.
This whole Climate Emergency is a scam a big time scam its all leading to a World Government lead by the so called United Nations who have yet end put a end to war