A European Destiny on Climate Change?

The EU could be far more ambitious in leading the world in action on climate change, according to Dr Michaele Schreyer, former European Budget Commissioner and now teaching at Berlin’s Free University. Speaking at a high-level seminar on ‘Building the Low Carbon Future’ held at the London branch of Deutsche Bank in the City this evening, she argued the case for a European Community for Renewable Energy. A German Green Party member who says that the British LibDems are doing great things in the European Parliament, she declared that Europe should be able to satisfy all of its domestic energy demand from its own renewable energy generation. Her passion was matched by another articulate panelist, the Nicaraguan-born activist Bianca Jagger, Chair of the World Future Council, who warned that oil addiction is a problem for all of us, as we sit on the brink of a global catastrophe.

The British government’s chief scientific advisor, Professor John Beddington, urged that energy matters be considered in tandem with food and water security issues and he highlighted the fact that 130 major port cities around the world are at risk of a mega-disaster because of sea-surges and other natural phenomena exacerbated by global warming. Recently, cities accounted for half of the world’s population for the first time in human history, and the growth of cities is continuing relentlessly, especially in the developing world. As other members of the panel (which included the distinguished Australia-based German architect Albert Speer and was wittily chaired by my old fellow Reuters trainee David Marsh, of London and Oxford Capital Markets) agreed, cities are currently a big part of the problem of climate change, but have to be redesigned to become part of the solution.