Conservatives add modest clause to non-binding climate change resolution, green NGOs explode – Telegraph Blogs

Even the most passionate advocates of the new target didn’t try to claim that it would have had any meaningful environmental impact. Their argument, rather, was that the EU ought to “send a message”, to “show courage”, to “take a lead”. In other words, they saw the legislation as being essentially declamatory: a way to advertise the purity of your motives rather than a proportionate response to an identified problem.

If the cut itself would have been symbolic, the vote in the European Parliament was doubly so, since it was not a legislative proposal. To listen to some green pressure groups, you’d think Conservative MEPs had just voted to wipe all living creatures from the face of the Earth. In fact, all we did was to support an amendment to a non-binding motion to the effect that carbon reductions in the EU should be linked to equivalent cuts elsewhere.

Have Chinese Coal Plants Been Keeping Global Warming in Check? | OnEarth Magazine

The fact that they disagree about what went on in the 2000’s doesn’t take away even a little from this underlying agreement