European environment ministers met in Luxembourg on Thursday to prepare for the next UN climate summit and discuss how to shield the bloc from a warming planet, as a record-breaking heatwave pushed temperatures across western Europe above 40C, killing dozens of people and causing mass poultry deaths.
“Look at the weather, look at what is happening in Europe. It is crystal clear: we need more mitigation, but certainly also more in the domain of resilience and making sure we get our people out of harm’s way,” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters on arrival on Thursday (25 June).
Yet much of the busy agenda was taken up by proposed climate rollbacks, including the replacement of the 2035 combustion-engine phase-out with weaker CO2 standards for new cars and weakening its carbon-pricing system for industries and power production.Hoekstra also signalled that the EU would push for electrification rather than fossil fuel phase-out at the next UN climate summit in the Turkish coastal city of Antalya in November.
“Let’s focus on electrification,”said Hoekstra. “That works for the climate, it works for competitiveness, and in reality it’s the same as transitioning away from fossil fuels, but it’s less controversial so I think it also works politically.”
