WILL THE LIGHTS STAY ON?

The government is asking the EU to relax the anti-pollution requirements it imposes on coal power stations. From the end of 2015 it is said that a number will close because it won't be economic to install the anti-NOx equipment.

"We need to keep the lights on," says the Government. "We need to allow these polluting plants to operate for up to 8 years longer at peak times, especially when the wind isn't blowing." It has persuaded the EU Council of Ministers to back a UK opt-out.

I've gone along with this argument. Maybe it's better, I have said, to keep old power stations for a few years longer than replace them with new ones before they can be equipped with carbon capture tecnology.

But the environmentalists say "you're wrong." And so do the operators of Drax, the biggest coal power station in Britain and Europe.

I think the government and I have been a sucker to lobbying by EoN and RWE. They have invested in their plants in Germany to ensure they comply with the anti-pollution laws but they are trying to get out of doing the same work here - even though 50,000 people a year are said to die prematurely from air pollution that includes nitrogen oxide from power plants.

The current low carbon price is bad news because it discourages investment in new low carbon technologies, but it's good news for operators of coal power stations. They are making lots of money from capital equipment which they claim is time-expired.

My German colleague, Holger Krahmer, is taking the Industrial Emissions Directive through the Parliament, and he is opposing the UK opt out.

I'm reversing my position and joining him. If RWE and EoN want to make money, then let them clean up the polluting power stations.

FOOLS, IDIOTS, VILLAINS

How can so many governments be so short-sighted?

Over the past few months a campaign has gathered pace in Brussels to persuade the EU collectively to back calls for an international trade ban on bluefin tuna.

In case anyone doesn't know this is the most valuable fish in the world. It's prized as the key to a good sushi, with a single fish exchanging for tens of thousands of euros.

And because it's so valuable it's been exploited to....well, to death. The weak management controls on the Mediterranean fishery have been largely ignored, with even the mafia getting involved in the lucrative slaughter. Stocks are now down to less than 8 per cent of the levels of 30 years ago.

After much debate the EU went to the conference on trade in endangered species with a unified position of opposition. Fat lot of good it did. A coalition of countries led by Japan insisted that trade should continue.

How stupid, how short-sighted, how ludicrous is this? The fish is on the verge of becoming extinct but Japan and it's friends don't give a toss. There will be no long term supplies and no jobs for fishermen unless we stop and let them breed, but so long as a few can continue to make money for a while longer they press ahead and hang the consequences.

And thus mankind destroyed its world.

DEFENDING NICK GRIFFIN

The team leaders (‘coordinators’) of the political groups on the European Parliament’s environment committee gathered for one of our regular business planning meetings.

The chairman, a German socialist who had perhaps been nobbled by one of his British Labour colleagues, started the session by referring to the fact that the Parliament’s delegation to the Copenhagen conference would include a climate change ‘denier’ who would hardly represent the majority view in meetings with other parliamentarians.

The arrangement is that every group gets representation in proportion to its size, but was there anything we should do?

I spoke first. “I know who you are referring to. I disagree strongly with his views. But this Parliament represents all shades of opinion, and there are many people who are not convinced by the scientific evidence on climate change. I must support the right of free speech.”

One by one the spokesman for the other groups – left, right and green, Austrian, Danish and Finnish – all expressed the same view.

So that was that.

Which will no doubt upset Nick Griffin greatly. How he would have loved to have been able to criticise the “Establishment’s” conspiracy to silence him.

CASTING LIGHT ON THE ISSUE

Good to hear a European Commissioner hitting back hard against those in Germany, the UK and elsewhere who have discovered a great love for the incandescent light bulb, the sale of which is now being phased out.

"Romantic nonsense," Gunther Verheugen told the Parliament's environment committee on Tuesday (1 Sept).

Mindful of how much energy the old bulbs waste, the Enterprise Commissioner and friend of industry told MEPs: "we cannot keep saying that we need change if we then resist all change."

"I am not going to be swayed by 'bulb hysteria'."

Good stuff. Let's hear the same from the Prime Ministers (all 27 of them) who backed the ban.

POPULATION CONTROL

In Athens, for the European Commission's biodiversity conference, with the EU clearly destined to miss its target of halting the decline in biodiversity by 2010, and a minimum 30pc decline in world biodiversity recorded since 1970.

In my speech I pointed out that one species was not in decline, and that having trebled its population in 50 years humans were making rabbits look sexually inadequate. "The ecological footprint of the EU is that of someone in steel capped boots."

Politicians are frightened to mention the reality of explosive population growth for fear of being accused of wanting to introduce coercive policies, or of rich-poor hypocrisy, I said. But the West relies on developing nations staying poor because if they had the same consumption levels as us the planet's resources would be gone in a flash.

Europe's high population could be gently reduced just by increasing the average age of first children, and the first step was to make sure the subject was on the political agenda and up for public debate.

"Very brave," whispered Tony Long, international director of WWF.

One male questioner implied that I was in favour of eugenics, euthanasia, female sterilisation, and girl child infanticide, which I thought a little extreme. "Dishonest in the context of the biodiversity issue," I replied.

Later, in response to a point from Tony about the use of resources for meat production, I said that I gave up eating meat more than 20 years ago, had found it easy, but did not know how to counter the image amongst so many people in developing nations that meat eating is a demonstration of affluence.

"Hitler was a vegetarian," muttered my questioner.

BIG BOOST FOR CCS

I've been reflecting on Ed Miliband's declaration that no new coal power stations will be authorised in Britain unless they include an element of carbon capture technology.

The climate change secretary didn't go far enough, of course, and ideally we should not be permitting any new coal fired generation, but credit where credit is due; it puts the UK at the fore of CCS development and will have a significant impact on thinking in the boardrooms of power companies.

Almost unnoticed by the media was Miliband's call for consultation on the idea of introducing emissions performance standards, limiting the amount of CO2 that can be released by any power plant, coal or gas.

In the long run the engine of CCS should be driven forward by the market, with generating companies seeking to avoid paying the cost of carbon allowances, but the technology will initially be very expensive and must be hand cranked, first through financial subsidy to get demonstration plants built, and then by regulatory requirements - such as emission performance standards.

The need for this approach has not yet been publicly recognised, and the UK government opposed the proposals for such standards I tabled last year. That Miliband is prepared to think afresh is bold and brave. Good for him!

ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?

The Parliament's environment committee has met for the last time before the European elections, with goodbyes to all the members who already know that they will not be returning, and warm words about how much work we have done together.

The committee will not meet again (except for a formal session to confirm the appointment of a new chair) for 5 months. Even though this happens only once every 5 years it seems an extraordinary gap. I only wish we could afford such a relaxed approach to the environental problems facing humanity.

EU BAN ON INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS

Not being able to attend this week's meeting of Parliament's environment committee got me out of a dilemma.

Europe's prime ministers agreed last year to ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs from 2011. Their replacement by low energy, long life bulbs is a quick and easy way to reduce total energy consumption by a per cent or two. While these are not perfect in every situation I suspect that the manufacturers will quickly address many of the deficiencies as their market expands hugely.

On the environment committee agenda was a German-inspired motion to halt the ban. I don't know the motives of the movers but one argument would have been subsidiarity. A CO2 reduction target has been set for every member state and surely it is up to them to decide how best to meet it.

So which way to vote? In favour of an EU regulatory instrument (in this case a ban), which have a track record of successfully achieving their objectives, or in favour of the subsidiarity principle at the cost of upsetting environmentalists?

I think I would have registered a principled abstention. I wouldn't want to oppose an effective measure to combat global warming but as the individual targets have been agreed I think the EU should always try to avoid being over prescriptive.

But note how this ban came about in the first place. It wasn't Brussels bureaucrats trying to undermine national independence. It was the 27 prime ministers, seeking a quick headline, who agreed without dissent to introduce a tough new EU-wide measure.

By the way, the MEPs who were there threw out the proposal to reject the ban on incandescent light bulbs by a majority of 3 to 1.

CLIMATE CHANGE? WHAT CLIMATE CHANGE?

The first cold winter in Britain for a few years and the cry goes up that man-made climate change is just a myth. An MEP from the UK Independence Party was voicing the usual scepticism of his colleagues this week in the European Parliament. .

But while we have been throwing snowballs at each other in Britain the fires have been burning in Australia, with people dying in record temperatures of 47 degrees that have given rise to both flash floods and forest fires. Wild extremes of weather are expected to become more and more common with global warming.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s new energy secretary warns that unless climate change is curbed the agricultural production of California will collapse and the cities face extreme water shortages.

There is good news. Much of the technology to reduce global warming emissions already exists, and the costs of introducing it are affordable. According to consultants McKinsey the price could be just one half of one per cent of world GDP.

All credit to my Conservative opposite number in the European Parliament, John Bowis, who rebuked another Tory MEP last Wednesday by declaring in debate that even if there was some remaining uncertainty about climate change the possible consequences of doing nothing were so great that action was essential.

What action is required? We need to curb our wasteful practices, invest in means of producing energy that neither pollute nor use up the Earth's resources, and reduce our dependence on foreign sources in the process. Surely even UKIP's climate change deniers would want to sign up to that!

THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND CLIMATE CHANGE

There's a gorilla in the room that politicians debating climate change don't like to acknowledge.

Next week the European Parliament will vote on a non-legislative report on the subject. It's a monster, an overlong dog's dinner review of the subject which includes statements from which I dissent as well as much that I cannot vote against.

I wanted to retable an amendment that was defeated in committee. It pointed out that world population has trebled in the past 50 years, is increasing by 153,000 every day, and this understandably generates a hugely increased demand for energy. It also called for the Commission and Member States to come up with some proposals for NON-COERCIVE measures to achieve optimum population levels.

And what does "non-coercive" mean? Women everywhere having greater control over reproduction. Couples having a first child a few years later than might otherwise be the case. Perhaps some financial incentives. But above all, discussion, just how many people can the planet support?

This prompted the first debate in the Lib Dem group about population that I can recall. The Romanians appeared particularly concerned about the idea that we should ask the Commission to actually propose something. It is the most important subject of all yet politicians are frightened of the consequences of discussing it.

We agreed to table my amendment so far as it mentioned the problem of growing numbers. But the call for some kind of follow up was deleted.

The man from Du Pont, he says yes!

9am, and a man from Du Pont (which I think is the world's biggest chemical company) knocks on my door. I had forgotten he was coming and had just returned from the parliament's gym. He stood in his suit for our conversation while I stood, dripping sweat, in my shorts (but after 40 years as a runner I bet my naked leg muscles were better than his covered ones).

The topic was HFCs, hydrofluorocarbons, which are used as refrigerants in supermarket chill chests, in air conditioning, and in foam insulation. Those in use today have an average global warming potential many times greater than CO2.

My Du Pont man proposes the creation of a trading system to discourage their use as an alternative to taxes or an outright ban. No doubt corporate self interest prevails but the idea has merits.

But I was interested to hear the latest on car air conditioning systems because I was involved in shaping the current legislation a few years ago (often pointing out that my car, a Nissan Micra, did not have an air conditioning system).

The refrigerant most often used is HFC134a, made in Runcorn by Ineos Fluor (ex ICI) which has a global warming potential of 1,500. The law we passed says that no new car from 2011 can use HFCs with a GWP greater than 150. This was set because there is an HFC with a GWP of this amount, although many in the car industry plan in future to use CO2 as a refrigerant which has a GWP of just 1 - but it has a few design problems, if it were to leak into the vehicle the driver might fall asleep.

What was interesting was to learn that Du Pont has now developed an HFC refrigerant suitable for car air conditioning with a GWP not of 1,500 but of just 4.

It's a text book example of how european environmental regulation drives forward innovation and brings products to the market.

Let's have more!