Annual Green Week

This week sees Europe celebrating the Commission’s annual Green Week for the eighth year running. Comprising 4000 participants, 158 speakers and 49 events, the week is going from strength to strength. It started off as a communications experiment with a view to discuss the EU’s environment agenda but by now it has become an integral part of the Union’s policy making process.

This year sees the Commission focusing on waste and sustainable production with the slogan, “Only one earth-don’t waste it”. Besides the continuing issues related to climate change, we are facing an equally worrying waste crisis. Even though we are producing waste at a much faster rate than we are recycling or re-using, there is a lack of awareness regarding the problem. As I have been campaigning recently for ambitious targets on waste reduction and recycling, I am glad that the organisers of Green Week 2008 have chosen to focus on this timely subject.

Green Week 2008 will also discuss biodiversity, climate change and the all-important challenge of reconciling economic growth with ‘going green’.

Carbon Capture: Don’t get carried away

Following months of heated debate on the controversial new European waste laws, I am now speaking for The Greens / European Free Alliance (EFA) Group in the debate on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). In January the European Commission published what they called the “Climate Change Package” - a set of directives looking at various aspects of combatting and adapting to climate change. I will be speaking for The Green / EFA group on the CCS issue.

Of course, for someone born and brought up in the Rhondda, coal has always been close to my heart. When I was growing up we waited for the school buses alongside the miners waiting for the NCB buses. It was still the major employer and a massive part of Rhondda life.

I was active in the support groups across the coalfields in the 1984/85 miners’ strike. In fact, I believe I was the only woman ever to go underground in Maerdy pit before it was closed. I still have the lump of coal I brought home.

But things have changed. It was never a secret that coal was a massive polluter. Miners’ lungs,old coal tips, felled forests and dirty rivers bear testimony to that. But no now we also realkize there’s a climate change crisis to which coal is contributing to in a big way. In Wales, Aberthaw power station is a major polluter, despite efforts to reduce emissions. The UK government seems intent on building new coal fired power stations, despite the damage they do.

Now a new technology is being hailed as the saviour of coal - CCS. It literally means extracting the CO2 from power station emissions and storing it at high pressure deep underground. This is not reducing our pollution, it’s moving it to another place. If the storage facilities are not available near the power station, the CO2 will have to be taken by pipeline (and we all know about the ongoing controversy over the LNG pipeline) to where it can be stored. It will have to be kept there for ever.

Of course, this may be a way of reducing the CO2 we pump out into our atmosphere and that would be a good thing - if it works. At the moment we don’t know if it will work. Yes, there is a lot of research going on. We also know that it is massively expensive, which is why so many trial projects have been abandoned already.

One of my concerns is the leaking of CO2 from underground storage sites. In a meeting with the European Commission I proposed that one of the criteria for approving a storage site should be that there would be NO risk of leaking instead of the no “significant” risk of leaking they had suggested. They will look at the draft again to see if it can be changed. If we are going to pursue this new technology we have to have all the safeguards possible to protect against anything going wrong.

We are still at the early stages of this fascinating debate and development. But one thing is clear to me: CCS is not the answer to the problem of climate change. We need to make very fundamental changes. We need to conserve energy and we need renewable energy. Wales is extremely rich in that resource. CCS is not the green light for going back to coal - even if that was possible or we wanted to. The monster that is Ffos-y-Fran opencast site in Merthyr Tydfil should teach us that.

We have to wait and see whether CCS will work and where it will be used. There has been talk of using old coal mines for storage - which sets alarm bells ringing for me - but for now it’s just talk. If we could use our past legacy in the coalfields of Wales to help ensure a cleaner future I would be the first to welcome it. But we’re nowhere near that yet. Let’s not get carried away.

For Wales see Navarra

The proposed One Wales coalition has proved a great deal of debate in Wales. It’s interesting to see that we’re not the only ones faced with such difficult decisions.

I am working this week in the city of Pamplona, in the Navarra region of the Basque Country, addressing a European Parliament seminar on renewable energy. But here too there is intense debate about the shape of the next government of Navarra. Following elections at the end of May a coalition between Spanish Socialists and Basque Nationalists is the likely outcome. No party has a majority and a coalition government is necessary. Ring any bells?

And the parallels don’t end there.

Different traditions in all of the parties concerned have agonised about how to take the matter forward. The Basque nationalists combined have 12 seats, the Spanish Socialists also have 12, and combined with smaller coalition partners they have 26 seats – and a majority of one seat in the Navarra parliament.

For many Basque parties, a coalition with the conservatives was unimaginable. But many feel they could find a way forward with the Spanish socialists on a common policy programme.

The decision is imminent and may be announced as soon as tomorrow.

They have also followed events in Wales with great interest, for obvious reasons.

Now that the Plaid-Labour coalition discussions are well advanced and following much discussion and thought, I have decided to give the proposal my support. My first preference was to be a strong opposition with a “New Zealand style” agreement with the minority government.

But events have moved on. I believe that on the basis of the radical One Wales programme we can make a real difference to peoples´ lives in Wales and open up many possibilities for the future of our nation. It is an agreement on an Assembly level only, of course. It will mean changes for us as politicians in the two parties but having talked to many of my European Parliament colleagues in similar coalitions I believe we can make it a success.

I will support this agreement positively and enthusiastically.

World Environment Day

Yesterday was World Environment Day - a United Nations Global Celebration. This year’s theme is Climate Change. Ask yourself…

1. What’s the number one thing you are doing to help tackle climate change?
2. What one extra thing could you do to help tackle climate change?
3. What’s stopping you?

At the beginning of this year I decided to make one in four journeys from home to the European Parliament by train rather than flying. I also recycle all paper and plastic waste and I have a compost bin. My garden is organic, although that’s been really difficult with all the rain we’ve had recently. I don’t mind sharing some plants with slugs and snails but not all my runner beans! I also try to buy food locally but I could do a lot more of this and that’s going to be my promise today.

If you can make a promise it will make a huge difference. Last year over 400,000 promises were made and if everyone keeps their promise we’ll save 9.5 million plastic carrier bags, 298 tonnes of batteries and 101 years of time working for a community environmental project. Go to the website www.mendoftheworld.org for more details.

One in four by train

Being a Euro MP inevitably means lots of travel, and in particular, air travel. So this year I decided to make a contribution in trying to reduce my carbon emissions, by vowing to make one journey in four from Brussels to Wales by train.

Thankfully I’m not the only person trying to reduce my carbon footprint as this recent article in the Independent explains.