Brussels – The European Parliament has voted for a 2040 climate target that fails to cut pollution enough to fulfil the EU’s responsibility to tackle the climate crisis, Greenpeace has warned. This comes on the same day that Climate Action Tracker found that the world is still on track for 2.6 degrees celsius of heating compared to pre-industrial levels – a level of heating that will cause catastrophic damage.
The liberals, centre-left and greens struck a deal with some of the centre-right to support a climate target proposal almost identical to the one agreed by EU environment ministers on 5 November. The target is for 90% cuts to the EU’s carbon emissions, compared with 1990 levels, but allows for several percentage points of that headline target and of national targets to be made up with purchased credits promising pollution cuts in other countries.
Greenpeace EU climate campaigner Eva Corral said: “This climate target is a 90% cut to carbon pollution on paper only, and full of so many loopholes and caveats that it will likely fall far short. Too many politicians have concerned themselves more with carve-outs for their national industries than with true collective action to tackle the existential threat of the climate crisis. Negotiating exceptions and dodgy carbon bookkeeping are no use in the face of actual floods, droughts, fires and storms. The warnings from scientists and health experts are only getting bleaker – the EU will have catastrophic climate disasters on its hands, and won’t have done enough to avoid this. How can the EU hope to push other countries to take serious action on climate if it does too little itself?”
The EU’s top scientific adviser on climate change warned that the 2040 climate targets backed by the EU’s national governments, and now by the European Parliament’s environment committee, were not in line with the EU’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The EU’s Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change had previously called for emissions cuts of 90-95% by 2040, and had stressed that this target must be for domestic reductions to climate pollution, not cuts outsourced to other countries.
The Lancet is warning that the climate crisis is already claiming the lives of millions of people each year.
Next steps
Three-way negotiations between the European Parliament, European Commission and national governments can now begin to finalise the EU’s 2040 climate targets.
The EU’s environment ministers meet again on 16 December, so could rubber-stamp the targets at that meeting if negotiations conclude by then.
Contacts:
Greenpeace EU press desk: +32 (0)2 274 1911, [email protected]
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Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network that acts to change attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace. We do not accept donations from governments, the EU, businesses or political parties. Greenpeace has over three million supporters, and 26 independent national and regional organisations with offices in more than 55 countries.
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