Europe needs a fresh approach to climate strategy

In Europe the debate about a new strategy to tackle climate change is beginning. The current EU climate strategy – the 2050 Low-Carbon Roadmap of 2011 – needs to be replaced. Its level of ambition (-80% by 2050) is not any more in in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, which calls for net-zero emissions by the middle of the century.

‘Investors might adopt a wait-and-see approach, instead of massively investing into new low-carbon alternatives, as they know that individual policies can be quickly reversed’

What is more, the economic, political and technological environments have changed markedly since 2011. Emission levels today are lower than expected in 2011. The failure of centralised energy and climate policy-making from Brussels has led to the emergence of a new governance framework – the Energy Union – that acknowledges the key role of member states. And while some low-carbon technologies such as batteries and solar panels have massively exceeded expectations of seven years ago, the contribution of other technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) currently appear to be insufficient to the long-term goal of decarbonisation.

Read the story by Andrei Marcu and Georg Zachmann from energypost - “Europe needs a fresh approach to climate strategy.”

The Trump administration's solution to climate change: ban the term

In a bold new strategy unveiled on Monday in the Guardian, the United States Department of Agriculture – guardians of the planet’s richest farmlands – has decided to combat the threat of global warming by forbidding the use of the words.

 ‘Also blacklisted is the scary locution reduce greenhouse gases.’ 

Under guidance from the agency’s director of soil health Bianca Moebius-Clune, a list of phrases to be avoided includes “climate change” and “climate change adaptation” to be replaced by “weather extremes” and “resilience to weather extremes.”

Also blacklisted is the scary locution “reduce greenhouse gases” and here the agency’s linguists have done an even better job of camouflage: the new and approved term is “increase nutrient use efficiency”.

Read Bill McKibben’s comment on The Guardian - “The Trump administration's solution to climate change: ban the term.”