Agnieszka Tomaszewska

Ed Miliband in Poland

On 7 October I had a chance to meet Ed Miliband (on the photograph). The UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change came to Poland to hold meetings with representatives of the Polish government before the COP15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen. He talked to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Jacek Rostowski and to senior officials of the Office of the Committee for European Integration, Ministry of Economy and other departments. He also gave an interview to the Rzeczpospolita daily.

In the afternoon, we arrived at the Warsaw School of Economics, where Ed Miliband gave a speech on why it is necessary to sign an ambitious global agreement to address climate change. In the Minister’s opinion, both moral arguments and responsibility for the planet we are going to leave to future generations as well as economic reasons call for such a solution. The cost of tackling climate change  is currently estimated at the level of 1% GDP, but if we decide to act only in ten or twenty years, the cost will be much higher. Ed Miliband also said that in order to reduce the costs of CO2 emissions, China, India and other big economies of the world should actively join the fight against climate change. The Minister indicated, however, that according to the UK, rich countries should support developing countries financially and help fund the projects leading to carbon reduction, as it would be impossible for those countries to finance such expensive projects on their own. At the end of his speech, Mr. Milliband quoted Jacek Kuroń, who said “Who if not you?”, the question that reminds us all that we are the ones who are responsible for what is happening around us and for the legacy we are going to leave to future generations. I think that these words could be a good motto for the Copenhagen summit.

I must say that I really enjoyed the question-and-answer part of the lecture, with questions asked by the audience: students, non-governmental organisations and representatives of business. While answering those questions, Ed Miliband had to talk about things as diverse as the role of business in fighting climate change and support that could be given by individual governments, through nuclear energy, to Al Gore’s documentary, to what UK would perceive as a success of the Copenhagen Summit, with only 60 days to the conference date.

Posted at 14:49 12 October 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[1]