In this edition, we learn why scientists reckon current southern European heatwaves are a direct consequence of climate change, and how recent elections might affect EU environmental targets.
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00:00Hello there and welcome to Brussels My Love, Euronews' weekly talk show on the news bubbling
00:18here in Brussels and beyond. I'm Maeve McMahon, thank you so much for joining us. Coming up
00:23this week, although the summer tourist season has just started, Southern Europe is already
00:28feeling the heat. From infernal temperatures to wildfires, tourists are suffering and so
00:34is the economy. As the EU Green Deal unravels, we ask what short-term measures can be taken
00:40to address these weather patterns and what the future of EU climate policies look like
00:45with shrinking politicians from Green parties. And let's talk about cars. Not any old car,
00:51but the internal combustion engine that powers most vehicles. Brussels has agreed already
00:57to a phase-out of the sale of diesel and petrol cars from 2035, but the EPP party who
01:03came first in the European Parliament elections want to ditch it. With the race on to electrify
01:08mobility and a tense trade situation between Brussels and Beijing on electric car subsidies,
01:14we're asking what the future of our four-wheel drive looks like. A warm welcome to our panel
01:18this weekend, Adelaide Charlier, Belgian climate activist and the founder of Youth for Climate
01:25here in Belgium. Welcome. Merci, thank you. Conor Allen, a corporate lobbyist here in Brussels.
01:30Hello. And Julien Paradis, EU policy specialist from EPICO, that's the Energy and Climate Policy
01:37and Innovation Council. Thanks for having me. Well, you're all very welcome. I know it was
01:41pretty busy this week here in Brussels. We had the EU summit here with the Ukrainian President
01:45Zelensky. We, of course, had all the news on the top jobs, but actually what we want to focus on
01:50is the weather and the impact the EU election outcome could have on addressing global warming.
02:00Summertime and the living is not easy in Greece.
02:06An early summer heatwave with temperatures above 40 degrees has brought about sporadic deaths
02:12and the closures of tourist sites. Back in Brussels, incoming MEPs are busy building
02:19coalitions and on the bottom of their agenda, the EU Green Deal.
02:26Compared to the green euphoria of 2019, the new make-up of the European Parliament could
02:31make climate laws harder to pass. Some even want to scrap promises already made.
02:40The question now, how much will this outcome complicate EU climate politics
02:44and deter the European Council from adopting ambitious measures?
02:50That is the question we're posing. Conor, Alan, let's start with you. What are you hearing in
02:56your circles? Do you think it will survive, this Green Deal, the next legislature, or do you expect
03:01rollbacks? Well, the Green Deal is going to survive, but in what form is it going to survive?
03:06I've started to characterise it as a bit of a zombie, actually, because it's neither alive
03:10nor dead anymore. What we saw in 2019 with this huge, ambitious climate legislation is clearly
03:16no longer the case. Voters came in these 2024 elections and they absolutely destroyed the Green
03:22Parties. In 2019, Green Parties won 24 votes and the EU centrist bloc called this a green wave,
03:29and they used it as the basis for the climate law. In 2024, the EPP and parties to the right
03:36of the EPP gained 50 plus votes. Well, indeed. I mean, and the Green Deal, just to remind our
03:41viewers, was, of course, the playbook of the European climate law to make this continent
03:45climate neutral by 2050. What is your take here on what this outcome could mean for this
03:50legislation? So I would say in terms of consequences for the Green Deal, this will really come down to
03:55who sits in the future college and who makes up the majority in the parliament. We've seen, as you
04:01mentioned this week, that the negotiations around the top jobs excluded Meloni, who I would say did
04:08an auto goal, a bit like the Italian team, by excluding herself by putting vetoes, for instance,
04:13on the pick for president of the European Council. And I think now the question is really
04:19who will be in the majority and how Ursula von der Leyen will secure a majority in the parliament.
04:23Because, of course, it was her baby, wasn't it? It was the project of Ursula von der Leyen who
04:27set to take another five years on in the Berlin Wall. Adelaide Charlier, just looking at you
04:32and the climate activists, where are you? You're no longer on the streets.
04:36Yeah, we are differentiating ourselves from the way we take action. Movements throughout history
04:41have acted differently. And it is just normal and obvious with the reaction also of politics
04:47that we take different types of actions, something that we can completely discuss also.
04:51What we are mostly scared of is obviously all the signals that we're hearing from the EU bubble of
04:57wanting to withdraw, going backwards, or completely deny actually the climate emergency. The Green
05:04Deal, it's not a question of whether we keep it or not. It's a question of are we realistic or not.
05:09We have to anyways face the climate emergency. So we need to keep that Green Deal. There's no
05:13question. It's the question of how we're going to continue it. Are we going to make it stronger?
05:18Are we going to make it different? And how do we include people in the decision making process?
05:22How do we include the social aspect? And I think that's going to be very, very hard in the next
05:26five years. And I think that's why we need even more climate activists in the next five years.
05:31Well, you mentioned Maloney, Georgia Maloney, the head of Italy. Of course,
05:34she's affiliated with the hard right group, the European Conservatives and Reformists,
05:38who will in fact be the third group in the European Parliament with currently 83 seats,
05:42and the Greens will be the sixth. And we saw what the Czech MEP from that group,
05:46Alexander Fonda, was saying the other day, that if he would compare the Green Deal to policymaking,
05:51driving a car, in fact, he said he expects the European Parliament to either use a steering wheel
05:56or braking pedal and not just the gas pedal. So there definitely will be voices there pulling
06:01back. And we're hearing that word realistic being used a lot. What do you think this word realistic
06:07will mean in practicalities, Julian?
06:08I think what we see now as a result of the election, but also because of geopolitical
06:14trends that have changed, that now the climate transition is not at the top of the agenda
06:19anymore. We have competitiveness, we have security issues, economy issues. And I think the main
06:25crucial aspect is now whether to what extent the climate aspects are associated to competitiveness.
06:33And that's the message, wasn't it, Adelaide, that voters sent as well, that it wasn't no
06:36longer a priority for them. Is that what you're hearing in your groups?
06:39Yeah, no, obviously, in my groups, climate stays a priority. But I think what is important here
06:44is seeing that the climate emergency is not a crisis. So we cannot handle it for five years
06:48and then say, OK, what's next? It's not like COVID. It's not like any other crisis. What's
06:53amazing with the Green Deal, what's amazing with the climate emergency plans that we can put here
06:57is that for the first time, we have a long term vision. For the first time, the EU is visionary
07:02and we can be a leader. And this we cannot deny. This is what we need. We're not leaders in any
07:07other subject. So we have to make sure we keep the Green Deal to stay visionaries. After, it's
07:12a question of how do we handle all the other crises that we're facing that will be accumulating
07:17in the next years? And how do we make sure that we keep that vision 2050 while facing the short
07:22term crisis? But we have to do both. And for that vision, you need leadership. And we had
07:26some viewers writing interest this week actually saying the Green Deal needs really good leadership
07:31and not just bureaucracy and regulation, but actually strong leadership. But Conor, that
07:35question we're always asking ourselves here, how do we go green and stay competitive?
07:39The way you go green and stay competitive is the exact opposite of what the Commission is actually
07:43doing. You need to have free trade and you have to have free markets. If you take, for example,
07:47we're going to discuss it later, the electric vehicles and we just placed massive tariffs on
07:51Chinese electric vehicles coming in. So we can't sell enough electric vehicles in Europe. We need
07:57to have these products being sold at bulk. We need to have them being sold very cheaply.
08:04The European vote has quite clearly said it's all about the economy. We no longer care about
08:08the climate crisis. Or we do, but it's a second priority for us. It's all about the economy.
08:13And what we're doing is disincentivizing companies from coming in, selling these great net zero
08:21products like heat pumps, like electric vehicles. The way we stay competitive is to merge the two
08:26together. I think it's important to highlight that there are many companies, many enterprises
08:30across Europe who have called in a call that was got together by the Club of Rome saying a deal is
08:36a deal. They are reminding the EU institutions that they want the EU Green Deal to continue.
08:41Why? Because it has sent signals. The EU taxonomy is starting to work. Banks are starting to invest
08:47in different sectors. This is what we need for the energy transition, for example. This is exactly
08:51what's going on. So even for the market, even for enterprises and companies, we have to keep
08:57that vision so that they know where they're going. And they started to shift. For them,
09:01the best thing to do is make sure that we are not unreliable and every five years...
09:05Well, this is it, isn't it? Industry really needs clarity. The business sector, they need to know
09:09exactly what's at stake here. Of course, they hate being told, oh, this is what you have to do,
09:14or this is the target day. That's not the way they like to be told how to do business.
09:18No, absolutely. But then again, as we said, we need clarity. And if you scrap some, if you
09:23reopen very bad precedents by giving the option of opening back files that had been closed,
09:29and this actually by scrapping, for instance, if we scrap the internal combustion engine ban,
09:33this means scrapping. You take away all the investment that has been done since,
09:37and you destroy the whole business case. And this is not what the industry needs. And I think
09:41I really want to tell the EPP, this is actually your chance to say we stand with the industry.
09:45We know the demands. The demands are not less regulation, go back, rolling back climate
09:51policies. It's more accessible to more affordable green energy, more financing tools, and so on.
09:58Well, as we said earlier, the Greens have lost seats in the Parliament. They'll be the sixth
10:02group. So we wanted to hear how they're feeling about that defeat. And of course, how they feel
10:06about the fate of the Green Deal. So we checked in with their outgoing co-chair, Philippe Lambert.
10:12Yes, there's a real danger here that the Green Deal will fade away, in fact. I don't believe
10:18that there will be, you know, a formal act saying now we kill the Green Deal. But the best way to
10:23kill it is just to do nothing. Because the Green Deal is regulation, but the investments are
10:29unfunded. So don't fund them, and they won't happen. There's significant areas, policy areas
10:35that have been left not covered by the Green Deal, starting with guess what, agriculture,
10:40despite what some have been saying that the Green Deal was a cause of the revolt of the farmers.
10:47You know, agriculture should be a carbon sink. In Europe, it's a carbon emitter. If you don't
10:53change our agricultural model, we will fail in the emissions of the Green Deal. So again,
10:59doing nothing is the best way to kill it. So Philippe Lambert, they're making a number of
11:03points, the logical one there about the funding as well. Many people don't know how this will
11:07be funded. We know the Commission has put that figure of 1 trillion euros out on the table for
11:13the next decade. But that seems a little bit abstract for people. Yes, but at the same time,
11:18we need to find funding and we need to make sure that it's on the table. And that's why there are
11:22many new mechanisms put in place that have to be directly put back into the Green Deal. This
11:26is something that we have seen, for example, even in the reaction of the COVID crisis, we were only
11:31to make sure that in the fundings that we put on the table for each country, a percentage would go
11:36to our long-term vision, the green transition. We have to keep doing that. The crisis that we'll
11:40be facing, we have to make sure that the funds we put on the table are always coherent. What
11:45businesses and citizens need is coherent. So now every time we put funds on the table, we have to
11:50make sure they're coherent with our objective of 2050. And then there are mechanisms such as CBAM,
11:57where we may have to make sure that that money goes directly into our transition, green transition.
12:01So there are many ways we can find money, many ideas out there. So I don't think the real problem
12:06is making sure we agree on where we get the money. And just into your circles again, does this make
12:11sense, what Adelaide is saying there? Well, it makes sense to a degree, but Europe's had its
12:16chance to put the funding on the table. We had the Net Zero Industry Act, which was touted as
12:22the great answer to the US Inflation Reduction Act. And what funding's there? It's a non-funding
12:27mechanism. They didn't put any money on the table. And you know, for all the well in the
12:32world, we can say the member states have to pay. We can do CBAM. All those costs get passed on to
12:37the consumer. And the consumer doesn't want costs at this moment in time. It's a cost of living
12:40crisis. It's an energy crisis. People don't want to pay for the green transition. And that's the
12:45message that we saw as well, I guess, in those European elections. But let's talk about the
12:49farmers as well, because of course, they were pretty noisy this year. They were out and about
12:53on the streets of the whole continent, in fact, and they were listened to. And it was interesting
12:59what Philippe Lambert said. In fact, they shouldn't be carbon emitters. They should be a
13:05carbon sink and not a carbon emitter. And I don't know if anyone saw this week in Denmark, they've
13:09introduced a levy on farm emissions in order to help them reach their climate target. I mean,
13:14could other countries follow suit here? Yeah, we need to support farmers financially. This is the
13:18first thing that they need is financial support, right? What I see personally on a European level
13:24is that we have both the CAP, so the Common Agriculture Policy, going one direction, telling
13:29our farmers produce faster, faster, no matter how you do it, just do it. And on the other side,
13:33we have the Farm to Fork Policy that's part of the European Green Deal, which is a total other
13:37vision of how we have to do agriculture. Which has been watered down a lot now. Yeah, and we're
13:41setting two objectives, right? Right now, we're not coherent at all. So we're telling them two
13:45things differently. And the subsidies are on this side, right? Produce, produce, produce. So it's
13:49obvious that the money is not where we want to have a respectful agriculture. So as EU policymakers,
13:56not me, but we need them to make sure that they are coherent in that vision of where we want
14:01agriculture to go in the next years. Well, Julian, you said all really lies on the future
14:06incoming Commission and the decisions they take. And of course, the Parliament.
14:09Absolutely. But I think to come back to the financing question, the number one goal is first
14:14to unlock private investment. We have a few set of tools that we can use to unlock this investment.
14:21And then on the second side, as Ade just said, we actually have a lot of instruments, but also
14:25money. For instance, there's still 500 billion from the recovery and resilience funds that have
14:30not been used. We're going to have money from coming from the ETS. Green public procurement,
14:35for instance, public procurement is over 14% of EU GDP. The CAP money is still the main
14:42fund of the EU budget. So I think orientating all of this doing climate mainstreaming and that we
14:48have policies that all make sense and go towards the same direction is really key here.
14:56Can I just jump in? Because a third of the EU's budget goes to farmers and it goes to
15:00agricultures. How much more funding do you need? No, no, we have to be careful in where it goes.
15:04I don't think it goes to farmers. It goes to landowners. Right. So that's the main difference.
15:08Landowners are not necessarily farmers. So we have this is where we go into the details of the
15:12CAP if we have time to actually debate it. So that's why we need to reform the CAP to make
15:16sure that the money goes directly to the farmer, the one actually touching the land and not the
15:20landowners. And we've had previous extensive debates on CAP and we will come back to it as
15:25this new legislature comes into place. But also we were concerned as well here at Euronews about
15:29the weather patterns we're seeing now in southern Europe. Pretty dramatic. I'm sure you've all
15:34seen the headlines. And we wanted to find out whether, in the opinion of one Greek climate
15:38scientist, that was linked, in fact, to global warming. So here's the view from Dr. Costas
15:42Lagouvardos. The heat waves that we experienced in the last years in Greece, not only Greece,
15:49but in the Mediterranean, are a result of global warming. Because we have made an analysis,
15:53especially for Greece, for the last 50 years, and we realised that heat waves are becoming more
15:59often. They are longest and also they are strongest. It's very bad for health because
16:04we're not acclimatised yet. And the problem is much more aggravated in the cities. Everything
16:09is related to climate change. And that means that we have to take measures to reduce the emission
16:13of greenhouse gases. We have to do it very fast because finally climate change is growing
16:20faster than we expected. So the climate science Costas Lagouvardos there saying that everything
16:25is linked to climate change and expressing as well the difficulties for cities like Athens,
16:30who have very few green spaces. Does that not scare you? It's scary, but we have the solution
16:35right there in front of us. And what we see in Europe is there are very few climate mitigation
16:39measures taken. If you think of heat pumps and air conditioning in Brussels right now,
16:43I think like something like 3% of all Brussels homes have air conditioning or of a heat pump.
16:49So we have the measures there. We have the things there to tackle this or at least alleviate the
16:53worst effects of it. And we can look at the longer term sort of plan on how to deal with
16:58climate change in tandem with that. Okay. And what about you Adelaide? Do you think that cities are
17:05being really left alone to deal with these issues? I think to go back on the solutions of what the
17:09cities have to put in place. And I mean, this is with the help, of course, of the EU. And there
17:13is a vision is that the first solution is isolation of houses and buildings. It would not
17:18that for me, it's the best technology. It's like investing also in green areas. And for that,
17:23we need a whole new way. We need our urban visionaries. And we have that. We have that.
17:29But we have to be willing to change. And that's the thing. Also in cities, we have to rethink.
17:33It means that it's going to be different. But do we have the money? Because cities are often left
17:38in a bit of a traffic jam, right, behind the governments trying to get funding from Brussels.
17:42We've spoken to a lot of mayors here on Brussels, my love, and it's not as simple as it sounds.
17:46Absolutely. That's the issue. And the figures currently are around 300 billion euros a year
17:53in the EU, a funding gap, and really need to activate this. Actually, EPICO just realized
17:58a paper on how to accelerate industry climate competitiveness in the EU, and with a series of
18:05actionable toolbox with measures that could actually unlock all these private funds.
18:10Give me your top three.
18:12So for instance, one is green credit guarantees for climate investment, therefore,
18:19enabling to de-risk the investment, which is really the number one priority. We have actually
18:24a lot of money in pension funds, in insurance companies, in banks, and so on. And this really
18:30needs to be unlocked. Secondly, green lead markets. We need to create demand for low
18:35carbon products. This goes through definitions of what is a low carbon product, but also,
18:41for instance, as I said, public procurement that could really be easily used for that.
18:47And third, I would say renewable energy. We really need more streamlining for permitting.
18:51That makes sense to you?
18:52Yeah, of course, it makes a lot of sense. And obviously, we have to also make sure we
18:56listen to science as a basic of also activists. And I think in the energy transition, the hardest
19:01part is also the transmitters. We invest massively into renewable energy, obviously.
19:06And then renewable energy, the hard part is making sure that constantly it can go reach
19:10people without stocking, which is one of the main problems. So we have to be careful also
19:14in talking about how much we produce, but how much we consume also. That's a big debate in
19:18the energy transition, but we really have to have it.
19:20And final thoughts from Connor on those points?
19:22Well, I think you've both taken quite a state-centric approach. I think what we need to
19:26do is unleash the power of the free market. This is a global crisis. It requires global resources,
19:31it requires global companies to step in there. We're not going to fight the climate crisis
19:34without mobilising the free market to fight the climate change.
19:38On that point, we can bring this conversation to an end, but do stay with us here on Euronews,
19:48because after the break, we'll be zooming in on the future of the car. See you soon.
19:52Welcome back to Brussels, my love. I'm Maeve McMahon, and along with Adelaide Cherlier,
20:05Connor Allen and Julien Paradis, we're talking through the news of the week.
20:09And one big story our newsroom is watching is the deteriorating relations between Brussels
20:14and Beijing. At the heart of the latest dispute, electric cars. Brussels has said it will impose
20:20tariffs on EV imports by the 4th of July if differences cannot be ironed out before.
20:25FYI, last year alone, almost half a million battery electric cars were imported
20:29into the EU, worth almost 10 billion. So Connor, I imagine you're following this story. It looks
20:34like electric cars are the latest kind of flashpoint, no? In a broader spat about what
20:38the Commission says is unfair state support for green tech exports.
20:42Well, protectionism, it's naked protectionism. I think the real issue with the subsidies on
20:46Chinese electric vehicles, it's neither a climate issue. If it's a climate measure,
20:51the tariffs will be 0% and we'll let in these clean, green electric vehicles.
20:55If it is an economic issue, there'll be 100% that the Americans have done.
20:59What the Commission's really, really scared of are these huge, giant European companies like
21:03BMW, Volkswagen, so on, losing their competitive advantage. But in fact, we have to say if they
21:08can't keep up with the times, they deserve to fall behind. Let them fail.
21:12I wish we had them around the table with us to get a reaction from that.
21:16Julian, what should our viewers be taking away from this conversation?
21:19First of all, I really welcome that the EU is finally waking up to China and the US having
21:24abandoned multilateralism for good and takes measures against over-subsidisation because
21:31technically this is not free competition and free trade, which I agree has benefits as well.
21:37It incentivises competition. It makes the transition cheaper and so on.
21:41But this is not the case with over-subsidised Chinese cars and we also need obviously
21:45charging infrastructure. But I think these mistakes can really cost us and
21:50have a consequence of the European market being flooded by cheap Chinese cars.
21:55So as you can see, this is a pretty big story. Everyone has a say. We'll keep an eye on it.
21:59The 4th of July, as I said, is the key date. Talks are very much ongoing. The phone lines
22:03are open between Brussels and Beijing and the European Automobile Manufacturers Association,
22:08ASIA, is also keeping a very close eye on that story and also on the whole evolution,
22:13if you like, of electric mobility in the European Union. So we actually caught up with their
22:17director, Sigrid de Vries, to ask us where we were on, actually, on that journey towards
22:22electrifying mobility. Take a listen. By now, about one in five vehicles have a plug,
22:27newly sold vehicles. So that's great in itself. About 12% of those are battery electric. The
22:33others are plug-in electric. But it's not enough. And electrification is a team sport,
22:40so we need many other conditions to be in place. We need the charging infrastructure. We need the
22:46market to come around, mentality shift, mindset shift. And we need incentives also to help
22:52kickstart the market. And all of that together will help accelerate towards global decarbonization.
22:59But at the moment, we're not yet there where we need to be.
23:02Sigrid de Vries there, the director of ASIA, speaking to me there and posing the question,
23:06how do we get there? Adelide, we're still very far away.
23:10I'm not going to bring you the solution, but it's really good that we're having this debate
23:13about the electric cars. And if I can bring back something that we too often forget in here
23:18is a worry that many people have, and many experts and scientists also, saying we cannot
23:24go from a fossil fuel-based society to a raw material-based society, where it's also a place
23:31where it's hard to get such raw materials without not respecting human rights. For the moment,
23:36it's almost impossible without having also geopolitical ties and therefore maybe tensions
23:42coming in. I mean, raw materials is not something we find necessarily in Europe. So our autonomy is
23:48questioned going towards that direction. And also just in general, for example, in Belgium,
23:53engineers have analyzed our land and have said in Belgium not everyone can ride an electric car.
24:00It just would not be possible because we do not have enough production of electricity for the
24:05moment and we would not reach such amount of cars. So I think it's important to highlight also that
24:11the future is not only all of us having an electric car, it's making sure that the mobility
24:17will be anyways public transport, making sure that all mobility will be electric, of course,
24:22but we will need in that mind shift that we are having to construct, like it was said earlier,
24:29it will need to be also not individual. The future is not individual, it's collective and
24:34especially in the mobility. But how do you tell that to people living across rural Europe who
24:38have two or three cars outside? Of course, but the people moving into the city, because this is where
24:43we are seeing people going also. So we have to, I'm not talking to people who do not have public
24:47transport right now in front of their house. I'm talking about everyone in the city. And of course,
24:52people right now in rural areas, we have to make sure that they have the solutions and maybe for
24:57them it will be the electric cars, but it will not be the solutions for the people living inside
25:01the city. Well, indeed, like one of the main complaints, in fact, of people is the lack
25:05of infrastructure. And according to Commission data, the number of accessible recharging points
25:10in the EU has doubled between 21 and 2023. But it's still only around 630,000, I think,
25:15Conor, so we're still a long way to go. Absolutely, really, really far to go. And
25:19the government has to keep up the investments in that. But going back to what you said Adelaide,
25:24who decides on this great communitarian future that you've proposed? People want individual
25:30liberties. People want individual freedom. For many people, personal mobility is the freedom.
25:35And, you know, for people like us, I think we're all in a very kind of good situation where we can
25:40choose to use the train or we can choose to use the car. But there's many people who don't have
25:43that choice. We have to make sure that this is a choice, exactly. It's great that you pointed out
25:48we need to make sure people can have access to public transport today. It's not the possibility.
25:52And when given the choice, what will they choose? Exactly, depending on the price.
25:56They were subsidising massively, actually, mostly still individual options. We're not subsidising
26:03enough the collective ones. So if we would align that, I'm sure that people will go to the cheapest
26:08option, which is kind of all of the time. So right now, if we would make trains cheaper,
26:13people would go for trains, not for planes. That's just how people function. You know it yourself.
26:18It's money, right? And if we want to make it equal and fair... Let's bring in Julien.
26:24Because, I mean, many would argue as well. Many would agree with you. I'm sure a lot of viewers
26:28are screaming that at the TV. But at the same time, the Green Party would be screaming,
26:32we have rights and obligations and we need to live within our boundaries.
26:36And I would agree with Adelaide by saying that basically the mobility is also a political choice.
26:42How our current transport infrastructure looks like is a political choice.
26:46But the EU also needs to figure out what kind of industrial base it wants. If it opts for green
26:52electric vehicles, that means we need to start, for instance, mining in Europe. We need to,
26:57as I said, have more affordable electric vehicles, but also massively invest in the rail system.
27:02Today, who takes public transport? Who is able to do that? And who has five cars? Who has one?
27:08I mean, the question of individual cars is not the fact that we're taking away one car
27:12from a big family. We're taking away the idea that you have five cars for three people. You
27:17know, the mindset of telling ourselves that we can sur-consume, this is the problem, right?
27:23So obviously, the social question is super important in the mobility aspect.
27:26A huge challenge it will be for the incoming commission as they try and tackle all those
27:30challenges that they are faced with. But that brings this conversation to an end.
27:34Thank you so much to our panellists for being with us. And thank you for watching.
27:38See you soon on Euronews.
27:47Welcome back to Brussels, my love. I'm Maeve McMahon. And along with my guests,
27:52we're just taking a look back at the stories of the week. And one that made us turn was this.
27:57Activists from Just Stop Oil spraying Stonehenge, the prehistoric megalithic structure in southern
28:04England that attracts tourists from all across the globe. A day later, the same group tried to
28:10target the jet of the pop star Taylor Swift in Stansted Airport to call her out for her carbon
28:15footprint. Turned out seemingly to be the wrong jet. But regardless of the facts, the images have
28:21pretty much gone viral in the past few weeks. So I want to ask my panel, do they think they're
28:26heroes or vandals there? Connor, let's start with you.
28:28Neither heroes nor vandals, but criminals. The outright vandalism they wreaked upon Stonehenge,
28:36it actually affected me quite emotionally. These people, they do not have any consensus in society.
28:41They haven't built up any political consensus for their arguments. And when faced with their own
28:47weaknesses and their own ability to create arguments, they sidestep our democracy and
28:51instead quite arrogantly try to tell us what to do. And the worst thing about it is it's
28:56completely subjective. If this is a group of conservatives or libertarians or neo-Nazis doing
29:01exactly the same thing, they'll be the first to condemn it. You look horrified by what you're
29:05hearing, Adelaide. It's what's the role of activists, right? It's not to bring consensus.
29:11This is not their goal. The reason why I'm an activist today and the reason why young people
29:16are around the table and debate today is because we have skipped school. And the day I skipped
29:20school, I swear the entire world was really mad at students for doing so. It was unacceptable.
29:27And today, of course, we have to question the role of the way we do it. But they have tried
29:32everything. They are bringing back, the main goal is bringing back the subject on the table,
29:37which is happening right now. But don't you think it hurts us in the long run,
29:40in terms of gathering support for the policy? Because the goal is not gathering support here
29:44with those actions. Gathering support would be the moment where we bring people in the streets.
29:48Well, let's hear from the horse's mouth, because we actually spoke to Adrian Johnson. He's the
29:52spokesperson for Just Stop Oil. Take a listen. Andy Weir in his 2011 novel, The Martian,
29:59opens with these famous lines. I'm practically fucked. That's my considered opinion. Fucked.
30:07Now, his character says that because he's stuck on Mars. There's no soil. There's limited food.
30:13He knows he's going to starve to death. We are heading the same way. I have two grandchildren,
30:19and by 2050, they will be 30 years old. I don't want them to be fighting wars over water and food.
30:27Our plan is to escalate, to intensify. Our government can basically call off all of our
30:34actions with the stroke of a pen by committing to sign an international legally binding treaty
30:40to end all extraction and burning all fossil fuels by 2030. So Adrian Johnson there,
30:48not mincing his words from Just Stop Oil, saying he's doing this for his grandkids.
30:52No, and I completely agree. I have to say where this is coming from when people lock themselves
30:57to the road or spray jets. And also Fridays for Future was central in gathering support for the
31:03Green Deal. But I would say now we need to convince instead of antagonize. We saw the
31:08results of the Greens at the last election that when you don't have citizens on board,
31:12you actually cannot implement policies. Do you know the window of Overton? This is a
31:16theory of change. We all have different theories of change around the table. This one is saying
31:21we have to take leadership. They are the ones who will bring this subject where we're like,
31:26guys, this is too much. This is too much. But tomorrow, if we can be 10,000 in the streets
31:30of Brussels in front of the commission demanding exactly the same thing, people will say, OK,
31:35that I support, but I don't support this. And they are moving the window of Overton
31:39so that we can make sure that at some point it's acceptable to hear that whatever is happening,
31:44whatever, how we take actions with activism, what we need is actually climate action.
31:48The only difference is that you support that, though. If this was a group of neo-Nazis
31:52painting the Eiffel Tower white, it was not as they're different. They think they're right.
31:56And you think they're right. The moment you step outside the bounds of society and the moment you
32:01step outside the mechanisms of democratic change that we have built up over hundreds of years of
32:05struggle, you lose all eligibility. Well, that brings this conversation to an end, as we heard
32:11there from Just Stop Oil. They're not going anywhere. So get used to them. And we'll be
32:15reporting it all here on Brussels My Love. Thank you so much to Adelaide Charlier,
32:18Conor Allen and Julianne Pardy for being our guests this weekend. And thank you so much for
32:22watching. Reach out. Brussels My Love at euronews.com is our email address. Take care and see you soon.