Spring Paper 12 EN | springeurop.eu

Springeurop Paper 12

« A more convincing Europe in face of climate change »

The urgency of the reforms to be undertaken to respond to climate change (whose consequences, probably irreversible, are already being felt around the world) is no longer in question.

The EU is endowing itself with important budgets to ensure the global leadership of the climate transition, while the COP26 is a failure ,because it has fallen into procrastination.

Let us propose ambitious measures to ensure the good use of these indispensable means to fight against global warming that threatens the entire universe.

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

1. European authorities will have clear communication on objectives, means, activities / targets and actors / targets. They will prioritize rapid 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 alone, it can certainly serve as an example.

2. Action will have to be taken at the European level and in global ,partnership.

3. Thus, the protection of global diversity resources (oceans, animal an plant sanctuaries, equatorial forests) will be promoted at the planet level, systematically favoring short circuits.

4. The education of young people and the information of adults will target the advantages of a consumption of quality and not quantity, including the environmental cost of each object.

5. A CO2 tax at the entrance of the EU will protect European companies from unfair competition, sparing them the additional costs of the climate transition.

6. The future energy mix will favor renewable energies with nuclear power. Carbon-based energies will gradually disappear: coal within 5 years, oil and gas in the longer term.

7. Road transport will switch from thermal engines to electric engines, including all aspects of this multidisciplinary change (battery recycling, charging station). Airplanes will give way to less energy-intensive means of transportation for short trips, with appropriate taxation.

8. The CAP will favor agriculture that respects the climate challenges. It will ,seek to ensure a balance between production and consumption by gathering and disseminating global, 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 has raised fears of a disruption of the world’s food supply, and the European Commission has just identified land equivalent to the size of the Netherlands that could be used for agricultural purposes. ,It is also likely that subtropical regions will increase deforestation to. alleviate the coming famine. The gamble of the CAP in not won.

9. Different periods of glaciation and global warming have succeeded each ,other on the earth. Today, the effect of human activities is added to that of solar cycles. These activities will be re-evaluated in terms of their climatic impact, without ignoring the birth policy. Aid to poor countries (primarily in Africa) will be significantly increased, as the improvement of well being. goes hand in hand with an expected decrease in the birth rate.

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