Paper 12

Jul 7

3 min read

“A more convincing Europe in the face of climate change”

The urgency of the reforms to be undertaken in response to climate change (whose probably irreversible consequences are already being felt around the world) no longer needs to be demonstrated. The EU is equipping itself with substantial budgets to ensure global leadership in the climate transition, while COP26 was a failure because it lapsed into procrastination. Let us propose ambitious measures to ensure the proper use of these indispensable resources in the fight against global warming, which threatens the entire world.

Spring, a private think tank on European challenges created in 2013, addresses a few recommendations for action concerning the “Green Deal” and its reform projects:

1. The European authorities will adopt clear communication on objectives, means, target activities and target actors. They will give priority to speed of action, justify their choices and report on the results achieved and the strategy put in place, under the control of systematic independent audits. If the EU cannot take charge of the world's future on its own, it can certainly serve as an example.

2. Measures must be taken at European level and in global partnership.

3. Thus, the protection of global biodiversity resources (oceans, animal and plant sanctuaries, equatorial forests) will be encouraged at planetary level, systematically favouring short supply chains.

4. The education of the youngest and the information of adults will focus on the benefits of consuming quality rather than quantity, including the environmental cost of each object.

5. A CO2 tax at the EU's border will protect European companies against unfair competition that is spared the extra costs of the climate transition.

6. The future energy mix will favour renewable energies combined with nuclear. Carbon-based energies will gradually disappear: coal within five years, oil and gas over the longer term.

7. Road transport will shift from combustion engines to electric motors, taking in all aspects of this multidisciplinary change (battery recycling, charging points). Air travel will give way to less energy-intensive means on short routes through appropriate taxation.

8. The CAP will favour agriculture that respects climate challenges. It will seek to ensure a balance between production and consumption by collecting and disseminating comprehensive, detailed and rapid information; it will support research and development of ecological techniques to increase yields; it will hunt down waste of all kinds. Problems abound: the Russian-Ukrainian war raises fears of a disruption of the world's food supply, following which the European Commission has just identified land equivalent to the surface area of the Netherlands that could be used for agriculture. It is also likely that subtropical regions will increase deforestation to alleviate the coming famine. The CAP's bet is not yet won.

9. Different periods of glaciation and global warming have followed one another on Earth. Today, the effect of human activities adds to that of solar cycles. These activities will be re-evaluated in terms of their climate impact, without ignoring birth-rate policy. Aid to poor countries (Africa first and foremost) will be significantly increased, as improved well-being goes hand in hand with a hoped-for fall in the birth rate.

10. In conclusion, the EU will remain proactive in pursuing its objectives, but also optimistic. It will seek to reduce its ecological footprint by relying on the reasonable behaviour of its citizens and on technological research and development. Many techniques already exist at the experimental stage that could, from 2050, protect us from global warming and supply the electricity we need: let us mention nuclear fusion, or the Myrrha project in Belgium, a clean, safe fission energy source able to recycle nuclear waste.