Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy MEP discusses COP21 | Energy Today with JM Glachant

Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy has been a member of the European Parliament since July 2009 where he sits with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. He is former Vice Chair and continues to be a member of the Environment Committee. Recorded 17 September 2015 Here he tells Jean-Michel about the role of the European Parliament in the debate surrounding climate change and the importance of effective scientific communication. "What I find most important after we tried the top-down approach with great failure in Copenhagen, we now have this bottom-up approach where countries have to submit their own climate plans." "If you have a message based on data that is so unpopular that nobody will follow you then have no influence." "Scientists and researchers are often very knowledgeable in their own field but not very knowledgeable in other fields like politics so it would be good for every scientist to take a short class on how politics works because it is a completely different world." "What I find intriguing is the dominance of media and television, sometimes you see what I would call popular scientists who have to ability to explain a very difficult topic in a few minutes and people get behind them. Those people play a crucial role." "Quite often scientists focus on the number and data, that is very dry information and they don't give the politicians the tools to use data for the larger public." "Live in the real world and that's a world dominated by media and images. I work on bio-diversity but in the real world it's more important that an actor like Leonardo Di Caprio is working on that then the most esteemed scientist in the world." "Timing is crucial if you present a report at the end of July it's clear that nothing is going to happen with it."