Report: The European Youth Event's green track
source: European Parliament
by Aydın Clara Orberk, 7,5 minutes
The European Youth Event (EYE) is a biennial conference hosted by the European Parliament since 2014 aiming to stimulate active citizenship amongst young Europeans. This year, the focus was on the topics covered by the Conference on the Future of Europe, such as climate change and the environment (for the CoFoE, explained, see here). The ECA delegation had the pleasure to participate on-site in the EYE 2021 held on the 8th and 9th of October in Strasbourg, and this article is a concise report of what was discussed during its green track.
Two events will be reported on in particular:
Speed Dating the European Green Deal,
and ‘On the Road to Glasgow’
In the wake of the unprecedented floodings in Western Europe and the fires in Southern Europe just weeks apart this summer, you may be wondering: what exactly is the EU doing to tackle it? That is precisely the question ‘Speed dating the European Green Deal’, an event hosted by the European Students Think Thank (EST) sought to answer.
The European Green Deal is the starting point of the European Union's climate change strategy. This project was presented by the Commission on the 11th of December 2019. It focuses on 7 dimensions aimed at making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. This target, and the intermediate target of reducing net greenhouse gas (GG) emissions by at least 55% by 2030 (compared to 1990 levels), were enshrined into law on June 28, 2021, after 6 months of long trilogues - informal negotiations between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission to agree on legislative proposals.
source: European Commission
On July 14, 2021, the Commission presented the first part of the 'Fit for 55' package, referring to the 55% GG cut. It includes 13 proposals, over which the European Parliament and the Council are currently pondering. For a more detailed overview of the European Green Deal, see here.
To make this more concrete, the EST presented participants with recorded videos of 3 different MEPs introducing us to specific projects they are currently working on.
Ciarán Cuffe, from the Green Party, is working on the Building Renovation Wave. The heating of buildings and households accounts for about ⅓ of emissions and 40% of the energy used in Europe. The ambitious strategy proposes support for speeding up the renovation of buildings, aiming at making them more energy-efficient and less carbon-intensive. More on it can be found on the Euractiv website, and the European Policy Centre assesses it critically here.
César Luena, from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, is working on the Biodiversity Strategy 2030. He describes the biodiversity crisis that the 6th mass extinction of species as a result of human activity constitutes to be central in the planetary, interconnected crisis that we are facing due to GG emissions and careless use of our planet. Accordingly, he is advocating for a legally binding soil protection framework, a framework that aims at protecting biodiversity in 30% of the land.
His other green priorities are:
Deforestation-free supply chains in light of the dramatic deforestation in the Amazon - in fact, the highest it's ever been since 2009, see here.
Measures aiming at strongly reducing and restricting single-use plastic. Single-use plastic is essential for people with some disabilities, but not for the average person, and pollutes our seas and threatens our ecosystems. Indeed, there currently is a garbage patch more than thrice the size of France in the sea - roughly 1.6 million square kilometres. And that is only the tip of the iceberg - about 99% of the plastic are not on the plastic ‘continents’ but close to the shore, still sinking, or on the seafloor. Because of these decennia old microplastics that enter the food chain, it is estimated that we may be eating the equivalent of a credit card of plastic each week. For a short video, see here. There are praiseworthy projects that remove tons of waste every year, of course, but an end can and must be put to the problem at its root.
Lastly, he strives for the inclusion of big emitters like China in the climate negotiations, in order for climate agreements to be global.
Cláudia Aguiar, from the Social Democratic Party and working in the tourism and transport, and fishery committees, is working on expanding PMAs (Protected Marine Areas) to 30% of the EU Sea area. She deems such a transparent and effective ocean governance necessary to preserve it.
Moreover, she is working on decarbonising the energy sector. This would bring about significant changes because the transport sector accounts for ⅕ of GG emissions in the EU (roughly ¼ if international aviation and maritime emissions are included). This is a complex endeavour, because each region, each city has its own identity: a solution solely focusing on better train connections cannot be the answer for the islands, the less populated countryside areas, or the mountains. In envisaging the solutions, no one should be left behind.
After the presentation, it was debated what energy sources are green. One should look out for misinformation on the one hand and greenwashing on the other. Depending on who you read, biofuel can be circular or climate neutral, and some argue nuclear power to be our best shot at meeting climate commitments while others strongly assess sustainable nuclear power to be a contradiction in itself given the longevity of nuclear waste, amongst other issues.
The discussion turned to the critical reception of the European Green Deal - does the package live up to its slogan - fair, just and deliverable?
First and foremost, the Climate Action Network (CAN), a network of 1,300 environmental NGOs across Europe ‘promoting government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels’, acknowledges the package as a massive legislative package, in fact the largest ever to pursue climate goals.
Nonetheless, they stress that “a 55% GG cut is not even halfway what is needed to make the package fit for 1.5 and in line with the Paris Agreement”. To tackle dangerous climate change, they call for further ambition and for the package to be turned into a policy framework that will keep us below the 1.5°C global warming target.
credit: CAN Europe
Besides criticising the GG target, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB, a European network of 170+ environmental citizens' organisations) and Greenpeace deem the package unfit and unfair, notably because:
Fossil fuels keep receiving subsidies from public funds and free CO2 allowances, de facto shifting the ‘polluter pays’ bill to EU citizens (as the Court of Auditors of the EU recently found, too, see here)
‘For all the hype, many policies won’t kick in for ten years or more’ - William Todts, executive director of Transport & Environment, a European federation of NGOs campaigning for cleaner transport
The ban on new fossil-fuel cars in 2035 is too little, too late - especially without accompanying measures to reduce car use and enable a shift towards cleaner transportation
Future carbon-capturing technologies are relied on too much in the climate mitigation pathways calculations
In sum, they stress that the package does not match what science and future generations require. While the political mandate is clear, ‘it is not enough to set distant targets, the concrete policies and subsequent results are what count’. And concrete deliverables are lacking for now. Might the ‘fitness’ of the package result from a trade-off with deliverability? Not necessarily, according to Patrick ten Brink, EEB Deputy Secretary-General: “Politics is the art of the possible and the package demonstrates low confidence as to what is possible, despite the growing citizens’ cries for ambition and new records being broken on climate impacts this year”.
Regarding future perspectives, the European Union’s very own European Environment Agency reported that the European Union will not achieve sustainability “by continuing to promote economic growth” and that it needs to rethink “not just technologies and production processes but also consumption patterns and ways of living” - it is for the Commission to “fundamentally revamp the policies that make destructive products profitable”.
Lastly, climate activists Anuna de Wever and Mitzi Jonelle Tan, green party MEP Niklas Nienass and United Nations Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth Jayathma Wickramanayke closed the green track. You can watch it here. The atmosphere was good, and the mood was serious in the hemicycle. Indeed, we are extremely far away from the Paris agreement. Estimates range from 3 to 4 degrees of global warming, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change notably predicts a catastrophic path towards 2.7 degrees (and until now, climate prediction models have been quite accurate). Every decile counts: around the Mediterranean, freshwater availability will drop by almost twice as much at 2 degrees as at 1.5 — 17 per cent versus 9 per cent. And in some areas of the world, it is crystal clear that the Climate crisis is a Human Rights Crisis.
Nevertheless, a message of hope and resilience was delivered - climate action is much cheaper than climate inaction and may even be better for the economy. Economical and readily available technologies and measures do exist. If the EU decides to lead in climate change the same way it was leading in the area of privacy with the GDPR, we can avert the worst of the climate crisis.
source: Aydın Clara Orberk
