BRUSSELS/MADRID (Reuters) – Europe sought to bolster the world’s faltering battle against climate change on Wednesday with its “Green Deal” to slash fossil fuel dependence, while teen activist Greta Thunberg rebuked global leaders for dragging their feet.
With fires, floods and droughts ruining millions of lives around the world, the European Union’s new executive cast the plan as the bloc’s “man on the moon moment,” kindling hopes among campaigners that other big emitters may follow suit.
Nevertheless, the chasm between the pace of action by Europe and other major economies and the kind of transformational change that scientists say is needed to preserve a hospitable climate stoked fury at U.N. negotiations in Madrid.
“I’m sure that if people heard what was going on and what was said … during these meetings, they would be outraged,” Thunberg told the gathering. She was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019 on Wednesday.
“It seems to have turned into some kind of opportunity for countries to negotiate loopholes and to avoid raising their ambition,” she added at the summit, accusing politicians of “clever accounting” and “creative PR”.
Hours later, police removed more than 100 mostly young protesters, some of whom were crying and angrily demanding “Climate Justice” in a rare intrusion of visceral emotion into the usually sedate annual two-week U.N. climate talks.
“It’s a terrible signal to the world. If they think they can keep us out to try to roll things through, then they are wrong,” Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, who left the venue to support the protesters, told Reuters.
In Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen portrayed the Green Deal, her first major proposal since taking office on Dec. 1, as a major step toward committing the EU to climate neutrality by 2050.
“Today is the start of a journey. But this is Europe’s man on the moon moment,” she told reporters.
Although von der Leyen’s talk of visionary action contrasted with a lack of new commitments from other major emitters at the Madrid talks, many question how quickly the bloc can embrace a low-carbon future.
