2nd Citizen’s Agora of European Parliament - Report
16/6/2008 CITIZENS’ AGORA, European Parliament, Brussels Report by Mike Robinson, Chair of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland As a representative of SCVO and as Chair of the largest civil society climate change coalition in Europe (Stop Climate Chaos Scotland) I had the pleasure of attending the European Parliament’s second Citizen’s Agora in Brussels.
It’s a big event, 500 representatives from across the 27 member states taking over the political chamber; as much about hearing the views of civil society direct as it is about convincing civil society of the value of the European institutions. But they were taking it very seriously. Hans Gert Pottering, President of the European Parliament, introduced the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barosso, as well as various vice-presidents of the EC and EU, the Secretary General of the European Chambers of Commerce and the leaders of the EU Environment Council, European Consumer Council and the EEA.
The inaugural Agora last year was about the future of Europe. This, the second, was about the largest issue facing Europe – climate change.
Jose Manuel Barosso opened proceedings with some powerful rhetoric : “There is no choice but to act now… and our credibility rests on our ability to deliver… The EU is bought into our 20-20-20 targets – 20% greenhouse gas cuts, 20% renewable energy and 20% energy efficiencies by 2020.” This set an uncompromising tone for the series of plenary presentations.
Speakers came from the US, the World Health organisation and throughout the European parliament and I was awakened to a new language. Europe loves its new words, introducing phrases which become commonplace, such as additionality, peripherality, biodiversity etc etc. The first unfamiliar phrase to me which is clearly an accepted European norm is Civil Society Organisations (CSOs rather than NGOs) perhaps many of you are more familiar with this terminology than I am. But the second which formed a backdrop to a significant proportion of the debate was the concept that we are actually entering the Third Industrial Revolution. Most specifically this reflects a need to develop micro generation and distributed more localised energy, trading and power, but this was provocative stuff. Globalisation was on the wain we were told. Oil was running out and, peak oil aside, we couldn’t afford to burn what fossil fuels we already know about, let alone find and burn more. Wow. As if that wasn’t enough, Jacqueline McGlade, Head of the European Environment Agency wanted to adopt a 350ppm limit on atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, as suggested by NASA’s James Hansen. They are currently 10-20% higher than this level and increasing, so this is a powerful statement.
American key-note speaker Jeremy Rifkin wanted the climate debate to be framed in the huge positive opportunity for local, distributed jobs through local energy generation, smart grids and energy efficiencies and less on the limits and penalties for non-compliance. In fact he thinks the success of a Kyoto replacement agreement hinges on it next year in Copenhagen. As he stated, we need to reframe the argument positively:
“Do you want to be investing in businesses at the sunset of the second industrial revolution or fuelling enterprises at the dawn of the third?”
He didn’t underplay the issue mind you and all the speakers were very clear – we have 6-9 years to really put action in place and start cutting greenhouse gases or we will have missed our chance.
He dismissed nuclear as an expensive, dangerous distraction; with an unsustainable demand for water resources; dismissed carbon capture as over expensive and flawed; pinned huge hope in a future within a hydrogen economy; and underlined the importance of civil society in ‘telling the story’; but the one piece of information he stated that stood out for me was an analysis of end-use energy consumption. According to Rifkin, the largest use of energy is through construction, heating and use of buildings. The third biggest user of greenhouse gases was our use of transport. But nestled between them, as second largest cause of emissions, was meat. Yes meat. The eating, shipping, growth, feed stuffs and land use for meat. I am aware that meat is incredibly inefficient in its use of protein (you have to feed cattle ten times more protein than you get when you eat it), and it uses seven times more land and five times more water than vegetables, but I had never heard it stated so bluntly as this, or as centrally implicated in climate change.
It was difficult to be in Brussels and not consider the UK profile there. In my experience the UK has probably the highest concern in the world for wildlife conservation and environmental issues, yet many of the main environmental gains that have been delivered in the UK have stemmed from Europe and European legislation. Yet, even with the backdrop of Ireland voting no, the UK seems the most vociferously anti-European of any of the member states. The UK seem to come bottom of every league table, only the UK had delegates whose only desire was to spoil the meeting and it is so often the UK that blocks change, vetoes legislation or opts out of everything. I don’t think everything about Europe is good, but I don’t buy the cheap journalism which does it a disservice by exaggerating the negatives about the shape of fruit or banning of ha’pennies or some such nonsense and misses the point that we seem to be uniquely and disappointingly always the last and least reluctant to buy into everything. True to form, two UK delegates did everything they could to spoil the entire Agora but they were fortunately so outnumbered that they became an irrelevance and democracy was able to flow.
I was reminded of our scorn for Europe and our disingenuous news reporting of international issues through one piece of unrelated good news I discovered whilst I was there, when I was privileged enough to have lunch with a lobbyist from G-Cap. At long last the UN Declaration of Human Rights for indigenous people had finally been approved at the end of last year, after years of UK opposition. The UK, yes that’s right, our Government, a beacon of democracy (along with the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) had for years refused to sign a UN declaration on human rights! How proud does that make you feel?
And then we were onto the business in hand. The meeting opened up to comments and debate from the 500 representatives and it was finally our turn to speak and discuss climate change. The key themes discussed revolved around economics, resources, techniques and education.
What was most distinct about the discussion from civil society was the injection of concern, care and passion into the debate, the huge consensus to take immediate action and a strong desire to focus on equity and taking responsibility. The EU had identified the need to act, but highlighted the need to retain international competitiveness and resource security and forgot to mention quality of life, equal opportunity and remediation of poverty. It was the CSOs who also moved the debate into how we can and should help the developing nations. The key headline ask that arose from civil society was a demand for the EU to increase its targets from 20% to 30% by 2020. It will be interesting to see if the EU take it on and perhaps a test of how seriously they take this whole engagement directly with their citizens.
As Rifkin pointed out, the newly expanded EU is now the world’s wealthiest market, but unlike the US it’s definition of a European dream involves more than simply money – it seeks to improve the human condition and reduce poverty and inequality.
My over riding thought is, that if we are indeed, as the EU stated, at the dawn of a new industrial revolution and Europe has a unique set of values which are not reflected in pure free market capitalism, then why are we using an economic philosophy from the first industrial revolution, why do we slavishly follow the US into ever more unrestrained capitalism and why do we only count everything in GDP, which has for decades been seen as an inadequate, partisan and an extremely narrow definition of success. We need a new economic philosophy for this new dawn, a form of moderated capitalism which properly accounts for the damage we do socially and to ecosystems, nature and the biosphere. GDP is our ultimate measure of national wealth, yet it ignores two thirds of the things we value. Isn’t it time we brought it up to date?