The EU must accelerate efforts to prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change, the European Commission said Tuesday. The commission did not propose any major new policies in response to the European Environment Agency’s report Monday on the escalating risks faced by the continent — new policies will be advanced following the next election — but did announce some changes including updated building codes to account for climate risks.
“In the next term, we need to focus just as much and probably more on climate action,” EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra told Politico, “but also more on the just transition…” More than three-quarters of europeans are very worried about climate change, but “a large part of the same group is worried about what it does to their way of living, to the jobs they’re having, to how things might be changing in rural communities, to how it will affect their lives,” Hoekstra added. “It is not one or the other. It is truly the combination, and that’s the difficulty.”
The European Commission did not announce any policies to push the agricultural sector to adapt to climate change; the EU Parliament also passed watered-down limits on livestock farming following months of protests by farmers. (Politico EU, Reuters, AFP via Barron’s; Risk report: E&E News, Fortune; Ag law: Reuters)