Swedish student leader wins EU pledge to spend billions on climate

BRUSSELS, Feb 21 (Reuters) - The European Union should spend hundreds of billions of euros combating climate change during the next decade, its chief executive said on Thursday, responding to a Swedish teen who has inspired a global movement of children against global warming.

Teenage Greta Thunberg said she and hundreds of thousands
like her were skipping school each week to focus politicians'
minds on a 2020 deadline for countries to step up planned emissions cuts.

In a speech alongside 16-year-old Greta Thunberg in Brussels, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also criticised U.S. President Donald Trump for suggesting climate change was "invented" and “ideological".

"In the next financial period from 2021 to 2027, every fourth euro spent within the EU budget will go towards action to mitigate climate change," Juncker said of his proposal for the EU budget, which is typically 1 percent of the bloc's economic output, or 1 trillion euros ($1.13 trillion) over seven years.

"Mr. Trump and his friends believe that climate change is something that has just been invented and its an ideological concept, but ... something dangerous is already underway," Juncker said.

Thunberg was in Brussels to join a seventh week of demonstrations by Belgian children skipping school to protest against global warming.

Read the Reuters story by Clare Roth  - “Swedish student leader wins EU pledge to spend billions on climate.”

Bill and Melinda Gates Unveil Big Plan for the Environment

In their annual letter, Gates and his wife Melinda hone in on what he says are the “five grand challenges” to combating climate change and global warming: agriculture, buildings, electricity, manufacturing, and transportation. Bill Gates wrote that Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the $1 billion fund he’s a partner in, will be using the “five challenges” as a guide for all future investments they make, which will focus on where emissions come from.

Bill Gates - five grand challenges.

“It’s important that people know that electricity, it’s only a quarter of the emissions,” Gates said in a promo video for the letter. “Things like cement, steel, meat—there’s a lot of other activities that are generating 75 percent of it.

Reads the story from the The Daily Beast by Molly C. Enking - “Bill and Melinda Gates Unveil Big Plan for the Environment.”