The 20th of May, 2020 was marked by several notable events: the global number of coronavirus cases hit 4,789, 205; the hashtag #hydroxychloroquine started trending after American President Donald Trump’s controversial admission that he was taking antimalarials as a prophylaxis for SARS-CoV-2; and Brazil became the pandemic’s third most affected country. […]
The new decade emerged with biblical proportions: fires swept across Australia, record breaking storms blew through Europe, swarms of locusts decimated crops in Africa, and now, a pandemic has plunged the world into the worst global recession since WWII. Unequivocally, the severity of these events was further mitigated by effects of climate change and human destruction of habitat. […]
Since taking office in December 2019, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen set out an ambitious programme to decarbonize the European Union: the European Green Deal (EGD). Presented on the 11th of December 2019, the EGD envisions a climate-neutral European Union by 2050 […]
On 11th March 2020, the European Commission presented the new Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP): a comprehensive roadmap building on the former Commission’s efforts to transition towards a new production and consumption model for Europe and its citizens. In essence, the main objective of the Action Plan is to address the bloc’s resource consumption and reduce its ecological footprint. […]
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the only emerging consensus when it came to climate change and airlines, was that airline greenhouse gas emissions needed to be reduced – however, no one could agree on how to achieve this. […]
The Coronavirus-crisis is hitting the world in an unprecedented manner, while two long-standing and equally alarming global predicaments are underway: climate change and biodiversity loss. In this context, a group of Environmental Ministers is calling for the EU and its Member States to mobilise efforts towards a joint environmental and economic recovery plan, arguing that EU laws, in this sense, might still be equipped with the right blueprints. […]
The European Commission has recently presented a proposal for a Regulation establishing the framework for achieving climate neutrality to the European Parliament and the Council. Also known as European Climate Law (‘the Law’), this long-awaited piece of legislation – if adopted – will become the first example of a legally binding commitment to achieve carbon neutrality. […]
The European Green Deal is about much more than eliminating net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050. The Commission plans to create the world’s first economy whose success is not built on an overuse of limited resources. But is Europe’s “man on the moon moment” doomed to fail? […]