Live Debate: Global Warming and Lifestyle Changes

Benita Ferrero-Waldner: Climate change is a threat multiplier that will have consequences and increased risks for societies in nearly all parts of the globe. But the good news is that the European Union is uniquely well placed to act. And now to immediately turn to our action. I think, as in many other areas, there is a direct link between the level of ambition of the EU’s internal agenda on climate change and energy and also our credibility externally. Our objectives, set out in the new integrated climate change and energy policy, that were agreed at the Spring European Council, are clearly ambitious. And there also the political commitment to delivering them, I can say, is really strong.

Climate change is, of course, a global phenomenon and, therefore, requires global action. And, as I’ve said, our international influence depends on the credibility, of course, of our internal agenda, what we are doing. And the environmental standards we are setting will set I think the standard, both for imports and exports, driving more environmental production in other parts of the world. So Europe’s soft power I think is also really here.

But do our actions have an impact? That is the question. My answer is yes but we need to do more, both collectively and individually, if we are to reach the very ambitious targets we have set ourselves. We are starting to use a greater range of energy resources and, of course, the high cost of hydrocarbons is one of the factors driving us. And I must tell you, I’m an incorrigible optimist. I’m confident that we will find new technologies to improve the performance of both traditional sources of energy and renewables.

Tackling climate change and its impact is a major foreign policy challenge of our times. No doubt many of you will have heard Ghandi’s most famous saying, “The future depends on what we do in the present”. Well, I believe it does, with a window of fifteen years to act. So we will need to act all together.

Ged Davis: The difficult question - and you can see it in the preparations for the G8 and I think the work in the EU, I’ve just come from a place where we discussed this - is at what level do we really have to stabilise the planet? Is it 550 parts per million? Is it 450? Or, as Jim Hanson was saying a couple of weeks ago and where I’ve just come from, it has to be 350?

Now that is extremely important and when you do scenarios, that’s where you want to focus on. And that’s important because it really focuses on the question of when do we have to get this turning point in place? Is it 2015? Is it 2020? Is it 2030?

What is interesting is the sort of technological options that will come in and how quickly they will come in. I think it’s laudable that the Commission have set the 2020 20-20[? 21:36]. I don’t know how many twenties - I think it was a brilliant communications attempt to have lots of twenties by 2020. But I think the practical question is whether we can build up the renewable industry as quickly. As somebody who dabbles in this, it is quite difficult - an immense challenge. The opportunities are there but I suspect the vision is too limited.

But I’m not sure whether the public really understands what both the scientists are implying, the politicians are leading on. And I say that because this is going to be a very testing few years with some real financial issues, with oil at $140, and it isn’t clear that oil and climate change or resolving energy security, particularly oil security and climate change always go in the same direction. For example, it’s a strong argument if you went to go for more security, you put more effort into Oil Sands in Canada - heavy carbon pollutions. You put money into the development if you’re in China, probably even accelerating coal developments if you can, and getting into other areas such as liquids from coal and liquids from gas which are also not particularly efficient. These have benefits.

Alojz Peterle: I was very attentive to the title of this panel and for me the key word is the lifestyle, and I know what institutions are able to do or are not able to do and what we can do at a personal level. And I think we are all aware of what’s going on. Maybe we are not all sharing the same opinions about the possible consequences of the global warming, and we all know that we are facing also I would say a major unpredictability. I’m pleased that the European Commission and the Council and the Parliament are, I would say, really on speaking terms in many respects and that the European Union, at the moment, is even a leading player.

And I’m sure that this issue, because we like to speak about democratic deficit, about citizens, closeness to the citizens, that the personal question or personal answers will be more and more important. Because institutions can do a lot, but if the citizens will not be fully engaged, if we will continue with the old attitudes also concerning our daily lives.

Richard Prime: But we are facing the most enormous crisis. I’m really glad too that, Mr Peterle, you gave a personal story of personal transformation because it seems to me that’s what crisis is all about, both on the individual level and also on the wider social level. Crisis means it’s time to change. It seems to me that we’re here specifically talking about climate change. In fact, climate change is only one.

We can’t stop the crisis. I think the crisis seems to me, inevitably there is going to be crisis and, in a way, I’m grateful because we can’t carry on like this. The real question is how to help people to see the crisis in a positive way and to be able to make the changes that we’re all going to have to make in good spirit.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner: Communication towards the populations all over the world has to be very clear, very focused and very quick, because this is really the first thing that you rightly said - maybe not everybody is already aware of the seriousness of what is happening. And I think that should be one of our common focuses. Even if we might not all come to the same level of engagement and commitment at the next big conferences but we should all at least engage in one thing, that we clearly communicate the challenges that are there and the possibilities. This is number one that I think. David Zaruk from Risk Perception Management

At $140 a barrel for oil, we seem to still be using our cars quite a bit as you’ve noticed from the traffic. One thing that policy makers do have as a useful tool to change lifestyle changes is taxation. Commissioner, would you agree - and there were whispers last year about this - that it would be a good idea to introduce an EU-wide carbon tax in order to do something to reduce emissions across the European Union?

Benita Ferrero-Waldner: Of course, we also have been talking about taxation at the last European Council, but I think you also hear this could have completely different effects on the macro-economic policies and the economy of each and every country. So many countries have spoken totally against that. And I think if you now would add to the taxation that is already there on the national level, you would go for prices that are no more feasible. You might make some changes but, at the same time, you know you have an enormous effects on people’s lives, on people’s food. And not everybody will maybe go for only raw food, which I think is a personal decision for you but maybe it’s not the thing that everybody would like to do. So I think you have to think - and this was just one example - of the effects, and the effects will be enormous already with the high oil prices. Indeed, everything is going to be more costly and for the moment, I don’t think this is the easy solution that we can take.

Willy De Backer: Good afternoon, my name’s Willy De Backer, I’m an independent journalist writing on a blog called 3eIntelligence. Because the politicians still do not dare to tell the right story about how deep we are in a crisis. And as long as that happens, there is nothing going to change, and you will have education and technology but you will need the lifestyle changes. So I think this is the point I would like to make here. The politicians need a lot more courage, a lot more guts, a lot more leadership.

Ged Davis: We need fundamental tax reform. We need to tax what we want to drive out of the system and we want to open up the opportunity for enterprise, incentive, and that means you can look at tax-neutral policies that shift the taxation towards carbon and reduce taxation on income, for example. It’s not just about forever increasing costs.

I would conclude with a comment. I would look to smaller countries. One of the great things about Europe is it has many different parts to it. Let’s look for great experimentation and courage locally, and I don’t expect that it will come immediately centrally, but it could.

Richard Prime: The trouble with, unfortunately, politicians, it’s very hard for them to tell people the things people ought to be hearing because they depend on the vote. But what politicians can do is they can indirectly encourage the marketing, the communicators in society, to communicate the right kind of messages. And I think that could be very powerful.

Question: If we assume that, let’s say, technology will not solve everything and we require some lifestyle change, and linking it to this question of the gathering today, being the lifestyle change, will it be forced upon us or can we do something in getting it now?

Let’s say how do you, for example, make sure that a community as a whole, in this case the whole world, acts together to get something done? It’s too easy for one party to say, I don’t have to do anything if the rest acts.

Ged Davis: I think what was called the tragedy of the commons is the challenge of this century. We have to learn how to break it. So that requires leadership. I mean you can’t avoid the fact that, at one level, you need to put in place the incentives. Secondly, those incentives can come from a newfound religion, a reverence for the environment, a secular religion. I mean there are a lot of ways to find the truth.

You could, in fact, say that a large part of the way we live our lives, our habits, are really no more than addictions dressed up in fashion. But if you want change, you’re going to have to provide leadership and I think to be fair to the Commissioner, she would argue that that’s precisely what the European Commission is doing. But it ain’t enough. There has to be more.

So the point is, and this in a way maybe comes back to the point about initiative and innovation, there are just many, many solutions out there and really what we need to do is to create an arena in which they can come forward much more clearly. And whether your vehicles or the hydrogen vehicle or others win, let’s do it in competition and let’s get these ideas out. I think there’s a genius in Europe - I believe there’s a genius in Europe that we learnt by going out into the world, coming back home in the 20th century, beginning to apply some of our energy to initiative, flair and so on, and it doesn’t all have to be just channelled into advertising. There are lots of other areas we can put it to.

Now whether, in fact, we will shift in the future but if you take the insurance perspective, you would expect there would be a very clear case made out there for much more radical change. The savvy politician will look for the options that are well aligned with energy security because there’s quite a lot we can do. But I’ll just come back to the point because I think this is central to the lifestyle issue. The fundamental question is the speed with which we can genuinely put in place what’s called energy efficiency but, in reality, it’s a combination of behaviour and size of equipment and efficiency of equipment. It’s got to do with how tough we can be on regulations on buildings and so on. And I would have thought that if their resources would be pooled, it’s precisely in that area. It’s understanding better the behavioural changes required. For example, we know from analysis that there’s a major rebound problem as we lower the price of energy and we improve efficiencies - people actually go for larger vehicles. And there is a lot of evidence that the size of the average vehicle has grown and so on through the nineties. So we need to intelligently handle that.