UK ‘Lagging’ On Climate Change, MEP Tells Brighton Meeting
7 November 2005 - Tony Blair’s claims to exercise ‘global leadership’ on tackling climate change are little more than hot air – with the UK’s CO2 emissions rising for the third year in a row and the UK failing to implement binding EU legislation on cutting emissions, Sussex Euro-MP Caroline Lucas will tell a Brighton meeting on Friday (November 11th).
Dr Lucas, Green MEP for South-East England and a member of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, will say the UK must implement all EU directives on climate change immediately – and use its presidency of the G8 and EU to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.
“Climate change is the greatest threat facing the future of civilisation as we know it – and we need international co-operation in setting and achieving tough targets on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions which are fuelling it,” Dr Lucas will say.
“The government has been discussing developing and sharing ‘green’ technologies as an alternative to persuading the US and developing nations to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol – but without binding targets there will be no incentive for nations to adopt such technologies.”
She adds: “We must reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in an equitable and socially just way – and the UK can play a key role by promoting tough, legally binding targets on emissions reduction, promoting energy conservation, investing heavily in renewable energy production, and adopting the ‘contraction and convergence’ principle, under which developed nations will have to reduce their emissions at a faster rate then their poorer counterparts.”
“This is the most important issue facing us today and I hope many Brighton residents will take it up with their MPs – and take part in the London demonstration to mark the International Day of Action on Climate Change on December 3rd.”
Dr Lucas will make her comments at a public meeting entitled ‘Climate Crisis’ at the friends Meeting House in Brighton on Friday (November 11th). She will be speaking alongside Phil Thornhill, national organiser of the Campaign against Climate Change, Brighton and Hove City Councillor Joyce Edmond-Smith, and Dominic Kniveton, a climate change researcher at the University of Sussex.
The meeting is one of a series around the South-East region before the International Day of Climate Action on December 3rd , scheduled to coincide with talks in Montreal at which ministers and heads of state will discuss the future of the Kyoto Protocol.
Organisers expect thousands to take to the streets in London for a march to a rally outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, at which Dr Lucas will speak alongside former Environment minister Michael Meacher, journalist George Monbiot, Norman Baker MP and Fazlun Khalid, director of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and the Environmental Sciences.
The march starts at 12 noon from Lincoln’s Inn Fields (Holborn Tube). Speeches at Grosvenor square start at 2.30pm.
ENDS
