Fiona Hall MEP

Fiona Hall MEP moves Lib Dem Conference motion on Climate Change after Copenhagen

Conference

I didn't want to be moving this motion. I wanted to be moving a very different motion, one describing the triumph of the Copenhagen Conference.

Until the last day, Friday 18th December, I thought that triumph might happen. But as the leaked drafts of the final text started circulating, and each one had another paragraph deleted here and another sentence shaved off there, it became clear just how far we were from where we wanted to be. It was indeed as if Europeans were living on a different planet from the Chinese and the Americans.

But this is not a fight that we can walk away from. The process of the Conference of the Parties carries on with a preparatory meeting in Bonn in June then CoP 16 in Cancun in December and beyond that, CoP 17 in South Africa in 2011. The pace has become excruciatingly slow compared to the urgency of the challenge.

But the picture is not completely black. The Copenhagen Accord does represent a small step forward even though it came so far below European expectations. The motion lists the key areas of progress. For a start, it is something to have got countries such as China to recognise that the increase in global temperature should be kept to below 2 degrees and moreover, that it may be necessary to consider a 1.5 degree cap in the light of scientific evidence. Then there is the commitment by developed countries to provide significant new and additional funding: $100bn a year by 2020 and a fast-track of $30bn for the period 2010 to 2012. And there was agreement too on a financing mechanism to help reduce deforestation and forest degradation. All of this may not add up to enough, but it's not nothing, either. The glass is perhaps ¼ full.

What's more, we should remember that is isn't legislation itself that makes a difference to global warming. - whether it's global, European or national legislation - What makes the temperature come down is implementation. Change on the ground. Doing things differently. And we don't need a binding global agreement in order to do things differently.

We are free to instigate change ourselves. Free as Europeans, as Brits and as members of our local communities. Only the Liberal Democrats understand the importance of taking the initiative on climate change. The other two parties won't do it. They will just sit on their hands. We know Labour has done far too little far too late. And as for the Tories, well, climate change has dropped down their priority list, off the end and into oblivion. So this motion today is about Liberal Democrat action. It's about voluntarily reducing emissions by 10% in 2010, as so many Liberal Democrat councils have pledged to do. It's about signing up to the Birmingham Declaration, and I fully support that amendment. It's about joining the EU Covenant of Mayors and pledging to go beyond the 2020 targets for energy saving and renewables. North East England is the only region in Europe to have signed up to the Covenant of Mayors as a region, all 12 local authorities with Lib Dem run Newcastle City Council in the driving seat.

But this motion is also about taking the initiative at a European level. And I want to highlight four things that we need to do as Europeans. First, the motion calls for the EU to move unilaterally from a 20% to a 30% emissions reduction by 2020. And I'm delighted to report that - as of this Thursday - the process of moving to a 30% target has been set in motion. The new Danish Commissioner for climate change, Connie Hedegaard quietly dropped the pre-condition of a binding global agreement, and is now speaking in terms of moving to 30% if it is in Europe's interests to do so. Which it clearly is, in terms of energy security and of economic transformation, quite apart from the need to go further in tackling global warming.

Second, we need to take a long hard look at the EU Emissions Trading Scheme to see whether it really is working. It had a shaky start, with too much slack in the system, and then just when it was getting off the ground the recession bit and the price of carbon fell once again. Too many things are riding on the carbon price for it to be left to slump. It is supposed to deliver the economic incentive for saving energy and for carbon capture and storage, and to provide funds to help developing countries.

So it's time to at least explore whether the emissions market needs a regulator and a mechanism to stop the price of carbon falling too low.

And finally, we need to look honestly at what went wrong with the process at Copenhagen. Is a table with 192 countries around it ever going to cut a hard deal? Is a UN process indeed the right one? We have to create a negotiating mechanism that is more effective. And we need to nurture a steady, long-term EU- Africa partnership on climate change, instead of resorting to chaotic last minute attempts to build an alliance, as happened in Copenhagen.

Perhaps most importantly of all, Copenhagen showed that it's not enough for the European Union to simply decide its position in advance and put its cards on the table. Negotiations require flexibility. Next time, the EU needs to speak with one voice and mandate one person, not a roomful, to deal with presidents Obama and Hu.

There is only one way to tackle climate change after Copenhagen. It's to take stock and then to take action. That is what this motion sets out to do and I ask you to support it.