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Reason number 1 why I want Britain to remain in the EU
There are several reasons why I want Britain to remain in the EU, but this one is head and shoulders above the rest.
I love wildlife and I love people. I want that wildlife to be there for my granddaughter and her descendants to enjoy.
I want us to combat climate change so that there is a chance of reducing (it's already too late to prevent it totally) mass starvation, migration, and death for those in the worst affected areas. I want to reduce the danger of increased floods, droughts, and losses in crop yields. Not to mention mass extinction of wildlife.
Much of our best and strongest environmental legislation comes from the EU.
Organisations like the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts are pointing this out to their members - I belong to both.
Here's the summary of the report they commissioned.
and a few extracts:
EU environmental legislation has been driven by the single market requiring common rules for products and services –for instance, individual countries cannot distort competition by lowering their environmental standards.
Some of the main contributions of EU legislation to the environment over the years include:
• Achieving a substantial decline in industrial sources of air and water pollution – although there’s further to go, particularly in improving urban air quality and tackling water pollution from farming.
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting rapid growth in renewable energy.
• A significant and extensive system for protecting wildlife and wild places - most notably through the Birds and Habitats Directives - that has helped to slow the loss of some habitats and species and invest resources in nature conservation. However, wildlife is still under significant pressure across Europe and much more needs to be done.
• Transforming waste management – increasing recycling rates and encouraging the first steps towards a more circular economy.
• Creating a thorough system for reviewing chemicals, and withdrawing many toxic substances from use.
• Building a legislative framework to protect our seas from mounting pressures.
I do not believe UK politicians will do this on their own.
The EU isn't perfect (the CAP still needs reform and the fisheries policies has only recently improved,) but the overall environmental record is a good one. If we leave the EU, we will immediately lose the Birds and Habitats Directives and have nothing to replace the protection they give.
I love wildlife and I love people. I want that wildlife to be there for my granddaughter and her descendants to enjoy.
I want us to combat climate change so that there is a chance of reducing (it's already too late to prevent it totally) mass starvation, migration, and death for those in the worst affected areas. I want to reduce the danger of increased floods, droughts, and losses in crop yields. Not to mention mass extinction of wildlife.
Much of our best and strongest environmental legislation comes from the EU.
Organisations like the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts are pointing this out to their members - I belong to both.
Here's the summary of the report they commissioned.
and a few extracts:
EU environmental legislation has been driven by the single market requiring common rules for products and services –for instance, individual countries cannot distort competition by lowering their environmental standards.
Some of the main contributions of EU legislation to the environment over the years include:
• Achieving a substantial decline in industrial sources of air and water pollution – although there’s further to go, particularly in improving urban air quality and tackling water pollution from farming.
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting rapid growth in renewable energy.
• A significant and extensive system for protecting wildlife and wild places - most notably through the Birds and Habitats Directives - that has helped to slow the loss of some habitats and species and invest resources in nature conservation. However, wildlife is still under significant pressure across Europe and much more needs to be done.
• Transforming waste management – increasing recycling rates and encouraging the first steps towards a more circular economy.
• Creating a thorough system for reviewing chemicals, and withdrawing many toxic substances from use.
• Building a legislative framework to protect our seas from mounting pressures.
I do not believe UK politicians will do this on their own.
The EU isn't perfect (the CAP still needs reform and the fisheries policies has only recently improved,) but the overall environmental record is a good one. If we leave the EU, we will immediately lose the Birds and Habitats Directives and have nothing to replace the protection they give.
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Oswin is only two, but she loves birds and flowers.
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It is not easy to find and evaluate all the positive and negative reasons. I don´t dare to interfere because I can´t know all the reasons but I love Britain because of her and I really don´t want to see her destroyed by political fights.
But from my side, I have always belonged to Euro-sceptics. I suspect enormous corruption within the EU which has already spread and infested our political and economic scene.This is what I loath the most...
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I think corruption can happen, and I think the EU is far from perfect, but on the overall balance I think we should be in it.
Britain has poor wildlife protection without the EU and you know where my heart lies.
Does Spoli get EU support for being a special area.
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There are often two sides of a coin and I have to tell you that at least here, in CR, instead of doing something good, some people have built their careers, political or whatever, on chasing the grants from EU in a dirty way...but I don´t want to spill the poison here.
Spolí used to be part of the Biosphere reserve and the environmental protection was provided by the UNESCO. Now the borderline of the reserve has been changed and shifted and our village is outside it - why, I don´t understand fully but there was a "good reason" from two political groups that fight (still fight!) over the Trebon peat spa and needed "more space".
Now our village council fight for every suitable support but we are a very tiny village and we can´t reach the EU support, only from the Region...
Bureaucracy here is the main reason for lots of failures and CR has been criticised from EU for unefficient dealing with projects and for losing massive amounts of money. So ...what is rotten is our internal situation.
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If I do the 'coin toss test' (assume that one or other of the results has succeeded on the toss of a coin, and see whether your gut reaction is that you are happy with that outcome or not -- also works for choosing which flavour ice-cream you would prefer), my guts vote for 'out'. Ten years ago I made use of the then-current pro-EU arguments when I needed a reasonable-sounding logic for Auron to join the pre-Servalan Federation, so it's clearly something I've been sceptical about for a long time!
My head votes reluctantly for 'in' when presented with reams of intellectually-consistent-sounding arguments -- reluctantly, because what it really wants to hear is convincing arguments the other way, but I'm intellectually honest enough to be conscious of that! But if I do vote In, it will be firmly holding my nose... not least because of the class/educational division that says People Like Me are all expected to vote 'in' to counterbalance the ignorant racist oiks at the other end of the scale who don't know any better. Reducing the whole thing to a contest of moral one-up-manship and My People Nice: Your People Nasty awakens all my instinctive contrariness.
(And I can see very well that a lot of the Out momentum is a howl of sheer protest against a perceived remote governing class -- whether in London or Brussels -- that doesn't ever listen and can't be influenced. Having all the political parties campaigning on the same side of the referendum really doesn't help in that respect. The mood of protest could be channelled either to the left, as elsewhere in Europe, or to the right. But sooner or later it is likely to break loose, with potentially violent consequences.)
To combat climate change, I think that co-operation on a rather wider scale than "driven by the single market" is going to be required; but nobody is proposing a political and economic union to deal with the problems of the Antarctic, for instance -- that would be a red herring. The world needs to co-operate in the ordinary way, and imposing regulations locally under the argument that it is for the benefit of commercial competition doesn't seem the most compelling approach to me.
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I always vote on environmental issues (because I believe we have to think long term rather than short term and having two year old granddaughter I love to pieces rather focuses the mind on her future world)
Every election, I go and visit web sites comparing where different parties stand on issues like climate change, over-fishing, pollution, etc. and then vote accordingly. It means I can switch off the radio and TV and avoid all the rhetoric.
This time around is no different.
I agree with you totally that we need world-wide co-operation on climate issues. However, I think you've got the wrong end of the stick when you say that the EU has environmental regulations solely for the benefit of commercial competition.
Some regulations definitely fall under that umbrella - rules on things like vehicle exhaust limits are intended to ensure that countries cannot not gain a competitive advantage by having lower standards.
Some EU laws simply impose overall limits on pollution and thus are not commercial in intent. People forget that our air and water got a lot cleaner as EU laws came into action. (England used to have a really bad reputation for air and water pollution)
However, items like the Habitats Directive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitats_Directive) and the Birds Directive have no commercial or trade angle. They exist to protect wildlife habitats and a lot of areas in the UK are covered by this legislation (and I do mean a lot - list here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Special_Areas_of_Conservation_in_England)
There's a lot of EU legislation relating to climate change (won't bore you with links unless you really want them)
One of the things that really worries me is that UKIP deny climate change. Read their manifesto (http://www.ukip.org/ukip_manifesto_summary). Basically, they want to scrap all legislation to reduce CO2 emissions and protect the climate.
And at that point, my gut says "Stuff the bastards" and votes along with my head.
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It's distressing that nearly all of the propaganda from both camps has concentrated on personal financials, like weekly shopping bills. This issue is bigger than any one person's disposable income.
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