“Our politicians have failed us,” a campaigner said. “European leaders’ continued support for the fossil fuel industry raises serious questions about their commitment to effective climate action.”
Renowned activist Greta Thunberg was detained on Saturday at a climate protest in Brussels aimed at ending European Union fossil fuel subsidies.
By Edward Carver
The protest included hundreds of campaigners from Extinction Rebellion and other groups; they came together under the name United for Climate Justice (UCJ). One group of them marched in an area near the European Parliament, while another group that included Thunberg blocked a section of the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique.
😊Happy to see @GretaThunberg keeping us company! pic.twitter.com/yVwj1IPeTR
— stopfossilsubsidies (@stopfossilsubs) October 5, 2024
“Our politicians have failed us,” Paolo Destilo, a UCJ spokesperson, told Politico. “European leaders’ continued support for the fossil fuel industry raises serious questions about their commitment to effective climate action.”
Another UCJ spokesperson, Angela Huston Gold, pointed to devastating floods that recently hit Europe and Africa as a warning sign for the planet.
“Increasingly frequent and extreme natural disasters are likely to claim a billion victims by the end of the century, mainly due to the use of fossil fuels,” Huston Gold said in a statement, citing a 2023 study in Energies, a journal. “To avoid ecological and social collapse, fossil fuel subsidies must end now.”
The European Commission published a report last year showing that the EU spent 123 billion euros ($135 billion) on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, an increase on previous years that was caused by policy decisions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (2022 was the last year included in the report.) The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development listed still higher figures for 2022.
EU’s Eighth Environment Action Program, which entered into force in May 2022, calls for a phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies, but national governments haven’t taken action, so progress is “uncertain,” according to the European Environment Agency, which is part of the EU.
Thunberg on Saturday told Politico that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who’s been in office since 2019, was not a green champion.
Thunberg, 21, was part of a smaller group of demonstrators who broke away from a march organised by the United for Climate Justice movement that began outside the European Parliament.https://t.co/XZcGMvDzqO
— Dawn.com (@dawn_com) October 6, 2024
UCJ on Tuesday sent an open letter to von der Leyen and other EU institutional leaders calling for a phaseout of fossil fuel subsidies by 2025. “The EU should provide technical and financial assistance to member states facing challenges in meeting phaseout deadlines and offer incentives for achieving milestones ahead of schedule,” it says.
Staffers at the European Commission were in fact among the demonstrators in Brussels on Saturday, Politico reported.
“There’s a lot of tools the institutions have now to fight climate change, but since the [European Parliament elections in June] there’s been a lot of backtracking,” one commission staffer told Politico, given anonymity in order to speak freely.
“It’s now all about competitiveness and the ‘clean industrial deal,’ whatever that means,” the staffer added. “The urgency has been lost—the Parliament has shifted to the right, the commission in many ways has shifted to the right—and discussion of the climate has faded into the background.”
Thunberg, who’s now 21, came to fame as a 15-year-old activist in Sweden who helped form the global school strikes for climate movement. She’s been arrested numerous times, including at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Denmark earlier this month.
Thunberg and other activists who sat with interlocked arms on the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique were arrested and taken to the police station, according to The Brussels Times.
Edward Carver is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
The original article can be found here
SDGs, Targets, and Indicators
-
SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
- Target 7.2: By 2030, increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
- Indicator 7.2.1: Renewable energy share in the total final energy consumption.
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SDG 13: Climate Action
- Target 13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning.
- Indicator 13.2.1: Number of countries that have integrated mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning into primary, secondary, and tertiary curricula.
- Indicator 13.2.2: Number of countries that have communicated the strengthening of institutional, systemic, and individual capacity-building to implement adaptation, mitigation, and technology transfer.
-
SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
- Target 17.16: Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology, and financial resources.
- Indicator 17.16.1: Number of countries reporting progress in multi-stakeholder development effectiveness monitoring frameworks that support the achievement of the sustainable development goals.
Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators
| SDGs | Targets | Indicators | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy | Target 7.2: By 2030, increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix. | Indicator 7.2.1: Renewable energy share in the total final energy consumption. | |
| SDG 13: Climate Action | Target 13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning. | Indicator 13.2.1: Number of countries that have integrated mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning into primary, secondary, and tertiary curricula. | Indicator 13.2.2: Number of countries that have communicated the strengthening of institutional, systemic, and individual capacity-building to implement adaptation, mitigation, and technology transfer. |
| SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals | Target 17.16: Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology, and financial resources. | Indicator 17.16.1: Number of countries reporting progress in multi-stakeholder development effectiveness monitoring frameworks that support the achievement of the sustainable development goals. |
Analysis
The issues highlighted in the article are connected to the following SDGs:
- SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
- SDG 13: Climate Action
- SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
Based on the article’s content, the specific targets that can be identified are:
- Target 7.2: By 2030, increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
- Target 13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning.
- Target 17.16: Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology, and financial resources.
The article mentions or implies the following indicators that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets:
- Indicator 7.2.1: Renewable energy share in the total final energy consumption.
- Indicator 13.2.1: Number of countries that have integrated mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning into primary, secondary, and tertiary curricula.
- Indicator 13.2.2: Number of countries that have communicated the strengthening of institutional, systemic, and individual capacity-building to implement adaptation, mitigation, and technology transfer.
- Indicator 17.16.1: Number of countries reporting progress in multi-stakeholder development effectiveness monitoring frameworks that support the achievement of the sustainable development goals.
Source: pressenza.com
