International

The European Parliament today voted on a resolution on the climate summit scheduled for December in Copenhagen. Following the vote, SP Euro-MP Kartika Liotard said: “I could never of course vote for a resolution in which it is stated that nuclear energy will form an important part of the energy mix. But because the resolution also supported an investment of 30 billion euros a year for climate measures which I can happily support, I abstained on the final vote.”

The EU wants to see poor as well as rich countries paying a contribution to a sustainable world. Liotard is critical of this: “Industrialised countries are responsible for the huge quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere, so the rich countries should also cough up for the costs and support the developing countries. That must not remain an insignificant sum. Ambition for a sustainable world is one thing, taking responsibility is, however, what’s really needed.”
Liotard sees it as unrealistic in relation to developing countries to expect them to limit emissions without sufficient aid. “We must actively support developing countries both financially and technically. To achieve a sustainable economy, solidarity on a global scale will be needed. As things stand these countries can hardly progress economically without plundering their own lands, for example through large-scale deforestation.”
During the debate Liotard sketched out the differences in lifestyle and therefore in CO2 emissions of a person with whom she had spoken in the street the previous day, and people living in poor countries. The former was a young woman who had just passed an ordinary day in the Netherlands: breakfast, shower, drive to work, work on her laptop, buy a bunch of flowers to take home, fry a delicious steak, then turn up the central heating a degree. Liotard: “A completely normal day for a Dutchwoman stands in stark contrast to that of a woman living in a developing country, which can often scarcely be characterized as surviving. The appalling situation in which, for instance, many of the oppressive and swollen slum districts in developing countries exist is often also a direct result of people being driven from their native regions by such things as deforestation or large-scale agriculture. To expect of developing countries that they should, under these circumstances, call for their people to moderate their habits is, therefore, simply hypocrisy.”