Defended by some, criticised by others, misunderstood by many, Europe's Green Deal on climate change has generated heated debate across the EU in recent months. European elections have intensified the focus on it. What is it and why is it controversial? Euronews Witness's Julian Gomez explores.
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00:08 >> We are a grain of sand in a massive desert.
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00:12 >> Negatively it affects our business.
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00:16 >> The political will is wobbly.
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00:19 >> Green Deal is a creation of thought.
00:22 It's all right.
00:24 >> This is going to be a new challenge.
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01:32 >> We are currently preparing a project to replace one of our blast furnaces with an electric arc furnace.
01:48 So we will shift to a scrap based steel making.
01:52 This will save over a million and a half tons of CO2 every year.
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02:00 [FOREIGN]
02:10 >> So this is very complicated in terms of infrastructure and logistics.
02:14 We first have to create a free space for the new production site.
02:19 We have to make sure that we do not stop the production for half a year or a whole year.
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11:59 >> The spotlight's on farming, but transport, home heating, there's lots of complexities,
12:03 and it doesn't get the same attention, and it should.
12:05 And the problem now is when you have to change faster, it's harder to do it fairly,
12:09 because it's just more abrupt, it's more disruptive.
12:11 But again, it remains the case that it's like when was the best time to plant a tree 20 years ago,
12:17 when's the second best time?
12:18 Now, the sooner we start the transition, and we have started,
12:22 but the sooner we focus on the transition, the better off we'll all be.
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12:37 [FOREIGN]
12:50 >> It is feasible, technically.
12:52 We know what the measures we would need to do to achieve the kinds of reductions set out in the climate law.
13:01 But there is a question about political feasibility,
13:04 and whether the Irish political system and Irish society is prepared to undertake the kinds of measures that are needed.
13:12 Ireland's historical record shows that it's not so difficult to design policies.
13:18 It's a lot more difficult to actually implement them and achieve the results that we want to achieve.
13:24 So Ireland has been good at setting out policy and grand ambition,
13:29 and it's good at following up on the implementation.
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13:39 >> It might be loud in.
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14:22 >> Is this something you are doing every year?
14:24 >> It's something we're doing every year, yeah.
14:27 It's something that I've been doing all my life.
14:29 My mother's done all her life.
14:31 My grandfather, my great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather had done all their lives as well,
14:36 and for generations before that also.
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15:04 >> I'm not doing any harm at all.
15:06 I'm heating my home, keeping my family warm.
15:09 It's not only my household, another household as well.
15:13 So if I'm self-sufficient in doing that, why should I change?
15:17 When, look around us, I mean, it's not like you're walking through a desert.
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15:27 [FOREIGN]
15:50 >> So when people kind of say or blame us for destroying or causing the pollution or whatever,
15:56 I find it hard to swallow that because we are a grain of sand in a massive desert as far as I'm concerned.
16:02 You have the likes of huge corporations, big pharma companies who are able to belch whatever chemicals they want up into the atmosphere.
16:11 Dublin Airport are looking at extending another runway for more thousands of airplanes to come in,
16:17 and there's no real accountability there.
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16:42 >> Peak was the only source of reliable energy in Ireland for a long time.
16:46 During the Second World War, the UK stopped importing coal into Ireland.
16:50 So Ireland had to be self-sufficient in its energy.
16:54 So anyone that's lived in Ireland for the past 60, 70, 80 years, if you've switched on a light,
17:00 you've had to use peat for your electricity generation.
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17:14 >> When my parents got older, they were entitled to what they called free fuel, and one of the free fuels was turf.
17:22 Ireland is windy 90% of the time, so I think we have to really invest in the wind farms
17:29 to make sure that the fire and the heat and the electricity that we're using would be a cleaner option,
17:37 and it's free and renewable.
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17:59 >> We're constantly raising awareness of the importance of peatlands
18:03 and what they provide to us, such as the water filtration, habitat for biodiversity, carbon sequestration.
18:12 It's not like we're not aware of the impacts of which just cutting off peat would have on some people.
18:17 It is some people's only source of fuel, and we have to be mindful of that.
18:22 But we also understand that we have renewables now,
18:25 and we can move away from the damaging and destructive practices of using peat.
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18:52 >> So this receipt shows for one bale of briquettes is 13 euros.
18:58 So it could be coming in from Poland or Slovakia, Slovenia, different countries,
19:03 and they talk about the carbon footprint, you know, they keep hammering at the turf cutters about the damage we're doing.
19:10 To me, how do you argue the point of we can go across the road, five-minute walk,
19:15 cut around turf, use our own local tractor and trailer and manpower,
19:21 but yet the peat briquettes have to be brought in from countries afar.
19:25 They have to be transported on ships or however,
19:28 and then loaded onto lorries and then transported all over the country.
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