Europe is playing at the polls for the future of the Green Deal (and of a habitable continent)

Benjamin van Bunderen does not need to have the risks of climate change explained to him, one of the hot points of these European elections in which environmental policies are being questioned. They are attacked by ultra forces, and others not so radical, who want to step on the green legislative brake or even reverse some of the laws and goals already set. At 17 years old, this Belgian activist is convinced of the need to fight for the environment, after having almost died in the serious floods of the summer of 2021 in Belgium and Germany. These types of natural disasters – such as fires, heat waves or droughts – are becoming more frequent and brutal, something that experts directly link to global warming. In the last three decades, Europe has warmed twice as much as the world average.

Her friend Rosa, 15, whom she had met at the summer camp in the Belgian town of Marcourt, was not so lucky: although Van Bunderen tried to save her, she ended up swept away by the sudden flooding of the river. Her body was found three days later. He was one of the two hundred fatalities left by the floods in central Europe that summer, which also caused losses of 44 billion euros.

“When we talk about climate change, we often talk only about figures and statistics. It is very important to remember that these are people. People are dying, they are suffering from climate change,” points out the teenager from Brussels, who has created the organization Climate Justice for Rosa, which seeks to raise awareness of the human and environmental cost of climate change. He is also participating in a recently filed lawsuit against the French oil company TotalEnergies for profiting from the fossil fuels responsible for the greenhouse gases that warm the planet.

This Sunday, Van Bunderen will vote for the first time – Belgium allows voting in European elections from the age of 16 -, convinced that we must defend the European Green Deal, the plan approved during the mandate that is now ending to adapt the EU’s policies on climate, energy, transport and taxation to the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 55% compared to 1990 levels by 2030.

“We are going downhill”

“I am very worried, we are going downhill, we need to preserve the Green Deal. You can’t build a green world on a dead planet,” she points out. Polls indicate that Van Bunderen is not alone. According to a Eurobarometer carried out in March, during the rural protests that prompted many politicians to reverse environmental policies for fear of losing political capital, 78% of Europeans consider that climate issues have a direct effect on their daily lives and health. , something that in countries like Spain, Greece or Portugal worries 88% to 98% of the population. 84% of respondents believe that the EU needs legislation to protect the environment in their country.

Also in March, the European Environment Agency warned that the EU is not prepared for the accelerated advance of climate risks. “Hundreds of thousands of people could die from heat waves and economic losses could exceed one trillion euros annually” if “decisive action is not taken now,” he warned. At a defense forum held last week in Brussels, the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, added a geostrategic risk of climate change: “It is going to be one of the biggest security problems in the world, because millions of “People are going to have to move and they are going to create new waves of migration,” he warned before dozens of defense ministers, senior military officers and security experts from around the world.

Despite this, Europe, which during this legislature that is now ending put itself at the forefront of the fight against climate change and environmental policy, now threatens to hit the brakes. She does so scared by the impact on the polls that social discontent is having after years of crisis and inflation capitalized by an extreme right that has made the environment its scapegoat. “Of course we are going to repeal the Green Pact,” promised the head of the Vox list, Jorge Buxadé, during the candidate debate organized this Monday by EL PAÍS and Cadena SER.

“The adverse reaction is very real. It is already happening,” warns Anaïs Berthier, head of the Brussels office of Client Earth, an organization of lawyers who sue companies and governments in 60 countries “to hold them accountable for their environmental commitments.” “There is a desire to have a deregulatory agenda, as we have seen with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)” after the agricultural protests, she recalls.

But there is also genuine concern about fears of the extra cost that will be implied by the implementation, in the coming years, of measures to contain climate change at all levels, all this when the threat of war triggers other spending in the EU, especially in defense. Even the most ardent defenders of the Green Pact concede that at the moment it is in, which will be mainly implementation in the next five years, it will be key to achieve “social support” to guarantee a fair green transition.

Green and social

“The Green Deal has been a winning bet on many fronts, the modernization of the economy, the provision of resources that allow us to reduce the gaps, the differences between Member States, and also the differences within a society, reduction of differences in costs , in energy poverty. But the following steps must necessarily be thought about as well. Without a doubt, a much more social perspective, much more detailed, much more transversal, will be some of the guidelines to complete this Green Pact,” said the vice president and head of the socialist list, Teresa Ribera, during her last visit to Brussels, whose name sounds strong for an environmental portfolio in the next Commission. “We need a green pact with a social agenda,” she reiterated this Monday during the candidates’ debate. “It is very important that we address the social aspect of green policies,” agrees Berthier, whose organization proposes the creation of a vice president of the European Commission “for People and Environment” in charge of guaranteeing the implementation of the European Green Deal in a socially fair

Nobody hides that the green transition will be expensive – the Commission estimates that an additional investment of 620 billion annually until 2030, 3.7% of the EU’s GDP, is needed to achieve climate objectives – but that inaction could be even more expensive. costly: damage caused by floods, droughts, fires, heat waves or diseases related to global warming will cause, according to the Commission, a drop of at least 7% in the EU’s GDP until the end of the century.

The European Commissioner for the Economy, the Italian social democrat Paolo Gentiloni, recently recognized the challenge, but also warned against making the “historic mistake” of reversing the Green Deal. “We can adjust, we have to be pragmatic, pay attention to the justice of the transition, to the social and regional aspects affected, but we cannot make the historical mistake of reversing the transition (…). Governments, activists and unions should join forces to send a clear message that yes, we have to manage social difficulties and problems, but we cannot go back on the green transition,” he insisted.

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