Why the European Green Deal Is Still Not Enough

On Wednesday Brussels unveiled its European Green Deal, which aims to transform the continent’s economy and societies to meet the challenges of decarbonization and the climate emergency by reducing harmful emissions by 55% by 2030. The package still faces a long road ahead: the 27 member states and the European Parliament have yet to approve it, there is much division among EU members, and countries like Poland, still heavily dependent on coal, are likely to try to resist the changes.

Nevertheless, the European Green Pact is important. In the first place, as a blow to the skeptics: the climate emergency is ever-more evident, its effects are being felt much sooner than some predicted, we need to take immediate action to avoid catastrophe. We are seeing more and more extreme weather events, and the tipping point is already here: several parts of the world are in a state of permanent emergency, waiting for the next impact, making it necessary to adopt radical, tough solutions, given that few countries and corporations are prepared to take their own initiatives. The climate crisis will not be solved by politely asking companies or society to change: if we want to survive as a species, mandatory action must be taken.

The plan relies on switching now to renewable energy and electric vehicles, while introducing a carbon border tax on imports and taxing aviation and marine fuels at the same time. The reforms mark the beginning of the end of fossil fuels in the EU: as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen rightly says, “the fossil fuel economy has reached its limits.”

The import tax will apply to heavily polluting steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizers and electricity production, and will be phased in from 2026. Between 2023 and 2025, importers, including of electricity, will be required to monitor and report emissions generated in production. In turn, they will be required to purchase digital certificates representing the tonnage of carbon dioxide emissions produced by the goods they import, and the price of those certificates will be based on the average price of allowances auctioned each week on the EU carbon market. If these importers can reliably verify that they have already paid a price for their emissions during the production of the imported goods, the corresponding amount may be deducted from their final invoice. It is, to all intents and purposes, an attempt to globalize emissions taxes: wherever you produce, you will pay for the emissions you have generated, because the problem is global and cannot be a function of the short-term interests of each country.

In addition to the tax on carbon dioxide generation, the proposal includes adapting buildings (a 3% renovation of buildings every year up to a total of 35 million buildings by 2030 to make them more efficient), decarbonizing energy generation (40% will have to come from renewable sources by 2030), and a 55% reduction in vehicle emissions, which will push the transition to electric vehicles (its sale will be forbidden in 2035, and hybrids will only be considered as “low emissions” until 2030). In addition, there are ambitious targets related to the fixing carbon dioxide by natural methods, with an ambitious plan for the restoration of natural ecosystems and the planting of more than three billion trees.

Nevertheless, while an improvement on previous tepid initiatives, this is still not enough. A 55% reduction by 2030 is still too slow and would leave too much work to be done, even more so considering that the evidence shows we are almost out of time. And if you’re selfish enough to think that because of your age, those dates no longer concern you, remember that the road to reaching that point will not be pretty and will be fraught with problems such as environmental disasters and catastrophes that will randomly affect anywhere in the world. So yes, it’s your problem as well. It is time to accept that we cannot go on living the way we used to, that we have to change radically, and that these changes, even if you don’t like them, are not up for debate. As many of us have been saying for some time, our very lives depend on making radical change, now.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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