Published: Sun, 29 November 2015
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“Climate Change is truly one of the key challenges of this century. Failure to address it effectively will result in major adverse impacts that will affect all countries,” said Seán Kelly MEP, who will represent the European Parliament’s Industry, Research, and Energy Committee at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris starting next week (7 December).
“I am honoured to have been chosen to represent the European Parliament at the global UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December and will be the only Irish MEP to do so. We received our mandate with a huge majority from the Parliament last month and we are ready to work in Paris to get our key points across,” Mr Kelly said.
The EU negotiating team will seek an ambitious and binding global and wants a firm commitment from the big carbon emitters to reduce their environmental impact in order to ensure that European industries are not lost to carbon leakage.
However, Mr Kelly warns that, while the EU wants to achieve its ambitious, a balance must be struck to protect jobs and growth across all sectors, and particularly through agriculture and business:
“Ireland, for example, is particularly vulnerable to loss of coastal assets due to rising sea levels, along with increased precipitation and the resulting flood risks caused by global warming- all of these factors could prove costly, both socially and economically.
“We need to limit these temperature increases, but we have a challenge to do so while meeting the parallel challenges of ensuring food security and maintaining EU competitiveness.
“The bottom line is, we need an ambitious and binding global agreement and we will push for that in Paris. If EU ambition is matched globally, we will keep jobs and economic growth here, while meeting the objective to reduce global warming to pre-industrial levels or below 2 degrees Celsius,” he added.
