Citizen Dialogue

Far from the eyes of the media, elected representatives in the European Parliament are writing a climate and energy plan for our continent. As citizens, we’ve campaigned hard for a global deal to stop catastrophic global warming, and Europe’s negotiators have driven progress in international talks — but if big polluters succeed in watering down Europe’s own climate action plan, all our momentum will be lost. And that’s just what’s happening right now.

This Tuesday afternoon, European parliamentarians are gathering to finalize their proposals — but the whole plan is being undermined by industry lobbyists demanding they lock in massive “permits to pollute”, which would put emissions targets completely out of reach for 2020 and beyond.[2] Before it’s too late, in the next 48 hours, let’s deluge representatives from our own countries with emails and phone calls — urging them not to give in to the lobbyists, and instead to put forward strong plans to build a sustainable future for our societies, showing the world the way forward.

Just click the link below to see the names and phone numbers of the representatives from your own country — we’ve added a few “talking points” you can use in your emails and phone calls:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_our_future_europe/?cl=133620462&v=2246

That is what we are demanding:

* Europe should not hand out free permits to pollute after 2013.
If we promise massive permits to pollute from now until 2020, we will never hit our targets. It’s giving up on the global negotiations before we’ve even tried. We need to encourage our industries to become more efficient and to invest in a more sustainable future.

* Europe cannot meet its targets by buying “offsets” overseas. We should definitely support developing countries with technology and funding to reduce their own emissions. But that is no substitute for taking action ourselves. The world will fail to avert climate catastrophe unless Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions fall dramatically: offsets aren’t enough.

* Stop dirty coal-fired power stations - and support testing of carbon capture and storage. Coal is currently one of the dirtiest sources of energy - we can’t meet our targets if we build more dirty coal-fired power stations. As people from NGOs to businesses are saying, we need to invest instead in exploring whether “carbon capture and storage” can work. This technology may be one of the only ways to stop the growth of China’s emissions. Meanwhile, no new coal-fired power stations.