Speeches

Mr President, thank you very much. Commissioner, thank you very much. Every time I've been here in Strasbourg, I've had this brooch on me that shows how much carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere. Five years ago, we had just passed 410 parts per million. I think it was 411 on the first time I was here in September 2019. Now it's 425. For every one millionth of additional CO2 in the atmosphere, global warming is accelerating. These are scientific facts. That kind of fact seems to be very difficult for the right wing of Parliament to grasp, and it confuses facts with political opinions and so on. It's very, very serious. With current ambitions, we will approach 500 around 2050 when we say we should be climate neutral. We're going to pass the two-degree target before that. It is very serious, but at least as serious is the resistance that we have encountered from the right side, both here in Parliament and in the home countries, for example at home in Sweden, when it comes to the very, very important nature restoration law. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that this is the single most important thing we can do now. It is also the most cost-effective. In the next legislature, we must raise our ambitions in all these areas and see the whole picture.

Madam President, thank you very much. Hundreds of thousands of people die in heat waves and costs in the order of SEK 10 000 billion per year just to protect the coasts of the EU against flooding as the seas rise. These are just some of the examples in the latest EEA report. We've been getting similar data from science for decades now. Yet the majority of the European Parliament chooses to turn a blind eye to this evidence. That is the only way we can interpret it, because otherwise we would have a climate policy that was in line with science and ambitious enough. This report shows that we are failing to manage 90% of the risks presented in the report. Global warming is accelerating. Climate policy must also accelerate in the coming legislative term – in the Commission, among the Member States and, not least, here in the European Parliament.

Mr President, thank you very much. 90% by 2040 may sound ambitious compared to 1990, but that is not enough. This is not in line with what science requires. In addition, we would need to update the scientific evidence given the rapid acceleration of global warming that we are seeing right now. We would need to have a target of having such small emissions by 2040 that carbon storage can be larger. In this paper, there is a huge technological optimism surrounding some kind of science fiction technology that will be developed and remove carbon from the atmosphere. The way we can remove carbon from the atmosphere at this time scale, we find in agriculture and forestry that would need to be fundamentally reformed. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we cannot just focus on the 2040 target. We must also continue to discuss the 2030 target. That too is insufficient and would need to be raised up to 70%, just as we Greens said from the beginning.

Mr President, thank you very much. When we look back at the late 80's, when we began to understand the problem of an ever thinner ozone layer, what we often at the poles at least usually describe as an ozone hole. What we did then, it is often highlighted as a good example of how politics can really listen to science and take in the alarm reports that existed then. What happened was that the countries of the world agreed that we needed to phase out these dangerous substances that deplete the ozone high up in the stratosphere many miles up in the atmosphere. That time, we really listened to the research and took these alarm reports very seriously. But we have a lot to learn from that work, what happened then. This is exactly the kind of process that we should have in other environmental and nature and climate issues as well. The work on the Montreal Protocol, which landed in the late 1980s, is not over, because there are still some emissions of substances that are not regulated, and there are new substances that did not exist at the time. Moreover, as some other speakers have said, there are clear links between these substances that deplete the ozone layer and the climate issue. On the one hand, we have some of these substances that are extremely potent greenhouse gases: They can be thousands, up to 22,000 times worse per molecule than CO2. But in addition, we have the big problem that when the greenhouse effect is amplified, it gets warmer down here at the ground surface but at the same time colder up in the stratosphere where the ozone layer is located. And if that cooling continues, there is a great risk that the healing of the ozone layer will take much, much longer. Therefore, if we want to take the ozone problem very seriously, we must also take the climate issue even more seriously and learn from the ambitions that we have, after all, made up to now with regard to the ozone layer and do the same with regard to other issues.

Mr President, thank you very much. Welcome to your new mission. Welcome, too, Commissioner Hoekstra! We are really in the midst of a climate crisis now - a climate catastrophe. And it is no longer enough just to quickly reduce emissions. We also need to develop technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere, store it in farmland and in our forests. But if we're going to do it, we're going to have to do it for real. In principle, the Commission's proposal is based on the idea that companies should be able to offset their emissions by buying themselves free using carbon storage certificates. It is not good enough, and we Greens have also managed to put an end to that. The result from the Environment Committee is quite okay. It's not perfect, but it's something to work on. That is why I very much urge you now to put an end to these totally absurd proposals from the Conservative part of the Committee on Agriculture. For example, agricultural activities should be able to be certified just as they are today without having to do anything more to increase carbon sequestration. Not only is it wrong, it is also betraying all the farmers, all the planetary keepers in Europe who actually want and can do something – much, much more – to really increase our chances of achieving our climate goals. Thank you very much!

Madam President, thank you very much. It was 35.8 degrees here in France on Monday, the highest temperature recorded in October in France. September was 1.7-1.8 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels globally. 1,7-1,8 degrees. It is much more than 1.5 degrees. We're already on the wrong side. We are at full speed into a climate catastrophe. We have a climate emergency. Within the EU, we must use all the tools at our disposal to mitigate the consequences of global warming. Trade agreements can be one such tool. They must be based on fairness and sustainability. Ecological sustainability, social sustainability. The Mercosur Agreement is a typical example of a missed opportunity. It needs to be unravelled, renegotiated and then it could become such an important tool that can limit global warming and mitigate the consequences of climate change.

–Mr President, Commissioner, thank you very much. There are 300,000 premature deaths per year. Yet we are not dealing with this as the crisis and catastrophe it is. Would we do that in any other context? I hardly think so. Yet here we hear many, especially on the conservative side, who claim that we would not be able to afford to deal with these issues. Of course we can afford to do that! On the contrary, it may be that we not I can't afford not to touch them. At the same time, we must also remember that the situation is even more serious in many other places around the world. And we also know that this very dirty air, the particles in the air, is helping to mask much of the global warming that we have already caused. Climate scientists usually find that about half a degree of the global warming we've already caused is masked by dirty air around the world. We therefore need to deal with both these issues at the same time. It is very much about transport and energy issues and above all about having a long-term sustainable thinking where we connect ecology and economy.

–Mr President, This summer, this year – here in Europe – and people around the world have a taste of what it means to live in a warmer and warmer world. Already within a couple of decades, with the ambitions that we have here in the EU, in the US and in China, we will have a two-degree warmer world. And for every additional tenth of a degree of global warming, the consequences come – in the form of extreme heatwaves, forest fires, floods, etc. – to accelerate and become much more serious. This means that from now on, we must have a full focus on even more climate adaptation, even more climate justice in the transition, but most importantly – not least in the run-up to the elections here in the European Parliament next year – all countries, all sectors and hopefully all political parties must raise their ambitions in terms of reducing emissions. We're in a hurry. There is still an opportunity to somehow adapt the world so that we may be able to cope with the challenges ahead. But time is running out very quickly.

Mr President, thank you very much. It's been pretty hot in here today. It's hot out there. It might be 37, 38 degrees this afternoon. I do not know if there is anything symbolic about it, because, if not this year, then at least next year, global warming will reach one and a half degrees for the first time. That's what you might call a fever limit for the entire planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is very clear. When it comes to pain relief and fever suppression, it is precisely the restoration of nature that is the best remedy. Therefore, it goes without saying that we need to get a nature restoration law in place now. But – as we all know here – for many in this House, this is very much also now about a political game of power, in which the Conservative Group wants to approach the far-right. It's the same thing I've seen at home in Sweden and also in Finland. That is why I am really surprised that so many in the Liberal Group are choosing sides with the right-wing parties. For example, the Centre Party, a party that was both liberal and green when I was growing up, but which today, at least this week, seems to be neither.

Madam President, thank you very much. It really doesn't look good. Not a single country in the world is on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. And what's the reason? First of all, of course, we have far too low ambitions in the climate transition. Secondly, we are not trying to save biodiversity. And thirdly, we do not understand the big picture – that we need to work on both ecological and social sustainability. Here in the EU, we could work fully on the Green Deal. But then we have the right-wing group, above all, which opposes and weakens it when we need to improve it. The only thing I can see as positive is that I know that there are many companies, many in the business sector, that are actively working on the SDGs, but unfortunately often with one or two or three of them without seeing the big picture. And what's the reason for that? Yes, again, of course, that we politically do not have high enough ambitions and are not able to see the big picture. We need to be much better at it.

Mr President, thank you very much. These are important issues we are debating tonight and we are voting on tomorrow. Then we will finally ensure that we have food supplies in the future and that Europe's farmers can cope with the big, big challenges that we face. For me as a green person, it goes without saying that the two really big challenges we face are climate change and the loss of biodiversity, which are so central for us to be able to produce food in a safe and sustainable way in the future. Climate change will certainly show much of the consequences already this summer. We have had extremely high temperatures to be so early in the summer – severe droughts but also severe floods. Exactly what we know will become more common in the future, and which we must prepare ourselves for and be prepared for. But what are the right-wing parties doing in this House? Well, they are putting forward proposals that are basically based on the fact that the biggest threat we have to food production is precisely the climate ambitions we have. They want even more fossil-based artificial fertilisation, they want even more pesticides that knock out biodiversity and pollinators and all that is really needed for us to have a safe, secure food supply also in the future. For me as a Green, it is self-evident to vote against this tomorrow. I will look closely at how my Swedish colleagues will vote, not least the Centre Party, which once stood up for the very things I stand up for today when I was a child.

Madam President, Commissioner, dear colleagues – although we are not that many still here on a late Thursday afternoon, which is a pity because this is an important topic. On the other hand, it’s 2023 and we shouldn’t even need to discuss this anymore, but we do. As we know, every year the EU animal agricultural industry kills roughly one third of a billion baby chicks and ducklings. As many other Members have mentioned as well, they are brutally ground to death alive or painfully gassed to death. Male chicks are not valuable to the egg industry and female ducklings are not valuable to the foie gras industry, and this is done with the full legal sanction of the EU. But we also know that a large majority of the EU citizens, at least 80%, find this cruel killing for profit inexcusable. As Nils just mentioned – or try to mention anyhow – the industry has already developed technology to separate eggs from the unwanted sex. So it’s not a problem. There is no excuse to justify this cruel practice anymore. It is time for a full ban at EU level. As a Green MEP, I strongly urge the Commission and all the Member States as well, of course, to listen to its citizens and stop this cruelty now. A total ban must be included in the upcoming animal welfare legislation. Full stop, with no exemptions.

Mr President, thank you very much. Thank you, and above all a huge thank you to the more than 1.1 million European citizens who have demanded this – from all the Member States. This is indeed a hugely important and urgent issue, and the role of the European Union in this literal soup is very central. It is approaching 50 percent involvement of all shark fin trade in the world. Thousands of tonnes pass through the EU each year in one way or another. Of course, this is primarily about the sharks themselves, but it is also very much about the ecosystems in our oceans. They must be in balance, and especially important for ecosystems to be in balance are precisely the predators at the top of the food chains. This is especially true for the climate issue. We know what an important carbon sink the oceans are, but for them to be a functioning carbon sink, we need to have functioning ecosystems, including sharks. This becomes even more important now that the oceans are getting warmer. As a member of the Group of the Greens, I actually find it strange that we should even have to discuss these issues in 2023 – we called for a total halt already in 2012.

Mr President, thank you very much. The greenhouse effect on planet Earth has never before increased as fast as it does right now. In recent weeks, carbon dioxide levels are about five parts per million higher than a year ago. This is a rate of increase that is in the order of twice the rate we have had on average over the last 10-20 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also writes very clearly in the latest report that now we also need to take action when it comes to methane emissions. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, especially on the short time scale, on the time scale that we have to make this whole transition. This text, which we are going to vote on tomorrow, shows that we in Parliament can be much, much more ambitious than what the Commission and the Member States have shown. We also know where the money will be taken from, namely from the fossil fuel industry. It would be enough to take 3 percent of their profits from the past year to get rid of 80 percent in that sector. That's exactly what we need to do now.

Mr President, thank you very much. In fact, the sixth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can be summed up in a single sentence: The situation is worse than in the reports before. That's what every report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says. I've been following them all for over 30 years. Why is that so? Well, it depends on two things. One is that research is progressing. We are discovering new details, such as the sensitivity, the destabilization of the great glaciers, Greenland, West Antarctica, which will cause the world's oceans to rise both faster and more than previously thought by the scientific community. But above all, it is due to a lack of politics in the world, also here in the European Parliament. The Conservative Group, the Liberal Group and the Social Democrats, which could raise ambitions, do not. We end up on Fit for 55 We should have had a 70 per cent ambition in the climate law. That's what the research showed then, and what the research shows now is that we must quickly raise our ambitions and become climate neutral by 2040 at the latest.

Mr President, thank you very much. It's time to talk about the forest again. This time not only forests within the EU, but all the world's forests and how to protect them from deforestation and deforestation. These are issues that are so obvious that we shouldn't even have to discuss them. It is a piece of legislation that could give us a very, very big positive effect in the near future. But at home in Sweden, this is discussed a lot. Sweden as a country – and with a broad political majority behind it – has made every effort to weaken this legislation. The same political majority still claims that Sweden has the world's most sustainable forestry. If Sweden's forestry were the world's most sustainable, this legislation would not be a threat to forestry. And if this legislation is a threat to Swedish forestry, Swedish forestry is not as sustainable as the vast majority still seem to believe and as the vast majority are still very happy to tell others that it is.

Mr President, thank you very much. First of all a big thank you to my Swedish colleague Jessica Polfjärd. It's been a lot of fun working together. It has been ambitious and it has been a good result, but given that, I really wonder, why is it that the Moderates at home in Sweden are not ambitious in the climate issue and the climate transition? The assessment made by the Climate Policy Council this morning was not just a sawmill - it was a chainsaw massacre of the current moderate-led government's climate work at home in Sweden. When it comes to the presidency of the Council of Ministers, it has been anything but ambitious when it comes to the climate transition. As soon as the word forest They have even acted more like a brake on the climate transition. But you, Jessica, have done a great job. I hope you can be an inspiration to other moderates back home in Sweden. If nothing else, you may well call home to the Prime Minister and say that it is time to raise ambitions at home as well. Because it's really needed!

Mr President, Commissioner, sadly it’s been difficult to get a majority to agree that animal welfare really needs to be a higher priority on our agenda, and we are still fighting to get a resolution on this issue. As Greens, we would like to see animal welfare in the title of an EU commissioner, or even a dedicated commissioner for animal welfare. Because there is so much work left to do and high expectations from civil society: End the Cage Age, Save Cruelty Free Cosmetics, Stop Finning and, just recently, Fur Free Europe. There’s millions of citizens that want to see concrete and EU-wide action as soon and as ambitious as possible. So, dear Commissioner, I’m expecting and will support an ambitious proposal for the revision of the EU animal welfare legislation. And I’m also asking you to really take these different citizen initiatives to heart, as you have done before, for the animals and for the citizens.

Mr President, thank you very much. It is both fascinating and rather frightening, I think, to listen to this debate. There seem to be so many people in this House who are satisfied and happy and who seem to think that what we have arrived at is enough – when we are so far from what is required by science to be in line with the Paris Agreement. This, in turn, makes us even more dependent on negative emissions, storing carbon in forests and soils. But what happens then? Above all on the right, both here in Parliament and in the Council, these ambitions are also being resisted. Inte minst den svenska regeringen har ju under den här perioden gjort allt för att sänka ambitionerna när det gäller att lagra mer kol i skog och mark. It is not only really lousy climate policy, but it is also unfortunately another sign, a proof, that Sweden is no longer at all a leader in climate and environmental issues. I find that very sad.

Madam President, thank you very much. Commissioner, thank you very much. Today we are discussing manure and this is really not a shit issue. It is about the transition. And we know how many farmers in the EU want to be at the forefront of the transition. We get an increased interest in organic farming, regenerative, permaculture, view of other crop rotation, not least to get nitrogen-fixing legumes. And in the transition, of course, traditional natural fertiliser will also be a very important part. But this proposed text keeps us stuck in the old mindset. It does not contribute to conversion. It keeps us stuck in the dependence on artificial fertiliser, fossil energy and thus also of course a huge climate impact. We simply have to vote against this. Shit belongs in our fields, but not in the legislative work.

Madam President, thank you very much. When we discuss these issues, we naturally get into mines and we know that mining poses challenges for nature and local communities. I am thinking above all of northern Sweden, northern Finland and the Sami, Europe's last indigenous people. Where it literally becomes an existential threat to the reindeer, reindeer husbandry that is so central to their culture. Year after year, Sweden receives criticism from the UN for not listening to the Sami when new mines are opened. So if Europe is to have any credibility on these issues, we really need to take into account the rights of the Sami people and discuss with them. This, of course, applies to indigenous peoples around the world. Many of them are convinced that we humans cannot own land or watercourses or that businesses cannot own land or watercourses because it belongs to all of us and everything. I think we could learn a lot from them, not least when it comes to respecting nature.

Madam President, thank you very much. Commissioner Timmermans! I'm doing the same analysis as many others when it comes to COP27. Small steps in the right direction when it comes to the work on loss and damage, damage and losses, but unfortunately a big disappointment when it comes to the very central work to quickly reduce our emissions. As regards the work on loss and damage, I have a question for the Commissioner: How are we going to improve our reputation in the EU and the rest of the rich world? In the past, we have also promised money to poor, vulnerable parts of the world without delivering. This time we really have to deliver. When it comes to the really central issue of climate change – the rapid reduction of emissions – it is only to be noted that: Sure, we raised our ambitions a little within the EU ahead of the meeting, but we are still far from what is required by independent science to be in line with the Paris Agreement. What should we do now, quickly, so that we start approaching the Paris Agreement well in advance of the next climate summit, COP28?

Mr President, thank you very much. Tonight we have with us a young climate activist from Kenya, Elizabeth Wathuti. We were some who met her and talked to her yesterday about the millions of people who right now are literally at the forefront of the climate crisis, the climate catastrophe – people at risk of starvation, people who do not have access to anything as obvious as clean drinking water, and mothers who walk a mile every day to at least try to dig up some water from otherwise dehydrated streams – and about the fact that those who have caused the least of the emissions are now at risk of suffering the worst of the consequences. This applies especially to young women in poor parts of the world: This is really at the heart of climate justice: generation, geography and gender. We must never forget those perspectives, nor must we ever forget or close our eyes to the fact that it is we in the rich world who have caused more than half of total emissions since industrialisation. We often focus on emissions here and now, but what causes climate change is total emissions, and there we in the rich world must step forward and take full responsibility. It is no longer enough to talk about climate change. We must now, not least during COP27, focus on loss and damage, damage and loss. There, in the rich world, we must step forward and take full responsibility for what we have caused.

Mr President, thank you very much. The terrible floods in Pakistan are, of course, a clear example of an extreme weather event in a warmer climate. However, it is also, unfortunately, a clear example of an event where we can no longer just talk about climate adaptation. Looking ahead in this century, we will see more and more areas that we will actually no longer be able to save and restore. What we are seeing now is an effect of all greenhouse gas emissions ever since industrialization. If we look at that amount, we know that it is we here in Europe, together with the United States, who have accounted for quite exactly 50 per cent. We must now stand up and take responsibility for these historic emissions. The humanitarian aid that the EU has provided to Pakistan so far is not enough. Pakistan is just one examples. The EU must now, during and ahead of COP 27, stand up for more funding for climate adaptation, but also clearly for funding for loss and damage; loss and damage. Unfortunately, we have to realise that this has gone so far.

Mr President, thank you very much. If there is one thing we can be absolutely sure of when it comes to global warming, it is that the risk of severe heat waves is increasing. They're getting more, they're getting worse, and with that, the consequences: forest fires, high temperatures, poor harvests, etc., etc. There is probably no other context in which every tenth degree will be so clear. Many in this debate now have highlighted the value of heightened preparedness and more climate adaptation. This is good and important, but most important of all, of course, is to slow down global warming. We need to take this more seriously. This applies to all countries in Europe. This applies to all sectors, not least here in Parliament, to all political groups. Take responsibility. Do what you can to ensure that we jointly reduce the risks and consequences of global warming.