A few words on the newly proposed EU climate action and European Green Deal

On 14 July 2021, the European Commission adopted a series of legislative proposals setting out how it intends to achieve climate neutrality in the EU by 2050, including the intermediate target of an at least 55% net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The package proposes to revise several pieces of EU climate legislation, including the EU ETS, Effort Sharing Regulation, transport and land use legislation, setting out in real terms the ways in which the Commission intends to reach EU climate targets under the European Green Deal.

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels will mean a reduction in Air Pollution, hence the climate action will eventually help us breathe cleaner Air, at last.

But many experts claim that this is not enough. We need bolder actions and much faster. The climate crisis has already become a climate emergency, with vast swathes of the Siberian tundra and the west of the US and Canada, and Australia and the Mediterranean countries burning summer after summer with bigger and bigger devastation; temperatures braking records year after year, reaching 47°C as far north as Canada in June 2021; the Amazon forest now releasing more CO₂ than it absorbs because of the unabated devastation by fires and recent droughts. Etc, etc… How much worse can this get until the EU target of 2030 and 2050 will be met? By then there will be not much forest vegetation left. And what about all the other highly polluting countries, when will they manage to reach carbon neutrality? It is widely recognized that the target of 2050 set in the Paris Agreement is way too late. We must go much faster to de-carbonize our economy if we want to maintain the temperature rise “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, ideally at 1.5°C“. Because if the next 30 years of industrial activity trace the same arc upward as the last 30 years, whole regions will become unlivable as soon as the end of this century. By then the temperature would have raised to above 3°C, and so many ecosystems would be lost, along with thousands of animal and plant species, while the weather extremes would be relentless all around the globe making life for humans very very miserable.

See here and here various very good articles on this issue published by the Transport & Environment’s (T&E) organization whose vision is a zero-emission mobility system that is affordable and has minimal impacts on our health, climate and environment.