💰 Five Horizon Europe missions for the next decade were handed to the EU Commission. Here's a summary:
🌊 Restore Europe's seas and oceans by 2030. Set up a hydrosphere agency, virtually map bodies of water, ban single-use plastics, green fishing & ferries;
🧪 Beat cancer. Focus on diagnostics, prevention, treatment and patient quality of life. Will closely mirror the Commission's own health plan;
🌡️ Climate resilience. The project will work with 200 communities to help them adapt to climate disruption. Former EU climate chief Connie Hedegaard is in charge;
🏘️ Climate-neutral cities. 100 cities should scrub emissions by 2030 as part of a like-minded network. EIB funding should be tapped to make it a reality;
🌱 Healthy soils. 75% of soils should be healthy and up to supporting ecosystems by 2030. Work still needed to be done on gathering data on soil health;
Now talks over the exact budget for each will be held. Horizon has a smaller warchest than planned and EU heads are still yet to give their final blessing to the MFF deal. Bit more detail on that here: eandt.theiet.org/content/articl…
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🧀 CHEESE WAR UPDATE:
EU court says Denmark is breaking the law by allowing its cheesemakers to sell products called 'feta'. Feta is a protected foodstuff that can only be made in certain areas of Greece
Denmark had claimed that its 'feta' was only for sale in non-EU countries, so no rules were broken. The court confirms that this is bogus and protected food norms still apply
Still no statement by Danish @Statsmin Fette Medriksen
If this isn’t a resigning matter I don’t know what is
💶 Auditors say the EU Commission overstated its climate spending by *€72BN* between 2014-2020. The watchdog fears that this discrepancy could be repeated for the current period [...]
The Commission said €216bn - 20% of the budget - had gone toward climate action. But spending was often overstated according to a new report. The main sector where the figure is overblown? Agriculture, by some *€60BN* [...]
By applying "more reasonable coefficients" the auditors say that just 13% (€144bn) was spent on climate action in that budgetary period [...]
🇫🇮 Finland aims to be carbon-neutral by 2035. But nurturing nature (~75% of the country is forest) and exploiting it at the same time is proving to be a difficult or even impossible ask
🌲 New data suggests Finland’s forests emitted more CO2 than they absorbed last year. Logging and slow tree growth probable causes. You can’t build climate targets on carbon sinks if your sinks aren’t doing their job
🌳 This is what happened to the Amazon last year. There, a mixture of logging and fires (deliberately set to clear land for farming) are the causes
🌱 THREAD on the cartoon/comic world’s climate change progress.
1. Tintin. Massive carbon footprint. Constantly travelling via inefficient means, just look at that plane tech. Also is potentially in the pocket of petrostate officials
2. Asterix. All-boar diet isn’t great and the Gauls are always chopping down trees to make palisades. The village arguably delays the Roman industrialisation of agriculture though. More progress needed
3. Flintstones. Mobility is pretty sustainable but Fred’s job at the quarry suggests heavy industry emissions and I don’t see any CCS tech deployment in Bedrock