EU meetings responsible for climate change?
The Indy reports that Government air travel has created 1000 tonnes of CO2 in the last year - clearly the Government’s going to have to deal with this if they want the rest of us to reduce our emissions (apart from continuing with the policy of carbon offsetting which doesnt reduce our environmental impact).
Many of these trips are for EU business, such as meetings in Brussels. The Lib Dems reckon only 30 tonnes could be saved by travelling on Eurostar instead. Further savings could clearly be made by conference calls, but many ministers will argue that it is important to carry out meetings in person.
Clearly this is a good argument for withdrawal from the EU (ministers won’t have to fly to Brussels) or complete integration of the EU (everything will be done in Brussels without ministers), depending on your political stance. Maybe even getting the MEPs who are already there to do more. On that note I wonder what the environmental damage of using Strasbourg Parliament is?!
Updated! - It seems that I’ve missed the point of this article and reported what I wanted to see. There’s a great graph in the Indy print version (just a list of figures online) showing that using Eurostar will actually significantly reduce the emissions created by visiting Brussels. Europe counts for less than 30% of the Government’s CO2 emissions from air travel, and this could be reduced by 90% by using Eurostar. Clearly we should force ministers to travel everywhere by train. It’s only 3 changes and 2 nights to get to Russia.