EU Must Adjust Climate Change Policy To Reach 2050 Emissions Target - Greenpeace Head

The European Union should reconsider its current climate change policy if it hopes to be successful in reaching its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace, told Sputnik.

KATOWICE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th December, 2018) The European Union should reconsider its current climate change policy if it hopes to be successful in reaching its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace, told Sputnik.

"I think it is achievable. I think that in order for the European Union to achieve it, the European Union needs to change the way it's doing business right now. It needs to prioritize getting the right policies and regulations and incentives in place for renewable energy and energy efficiency. It needs to change the way it is doing its policies in agriculture. Technically it's possible, it's more of a technical challenge than a political one," Morgan said on the sidelines of COP24.

Greenpeace's head noted that Belgium, as a wealthy country, should achieve the goal one decade earlier than expected, in 2040, and thus help give less developed countries more of a chance to mitigate emissions until 2050.

"Greenpeace certainly welcomes the long-term plan of the European Union as a glimmer of hope. We think that actually because the European Union is a group of wealthy countries, they should achieve that net zero neutrality goal before 2050, so in 2040, so that provides some space for developing countries to actually have more time so that you can get a global zero net carbon by 2050," Morgan added.

In November, EU Climate Action and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete announced that the European Union was aiming to become the first major "climate-neutral" economy in the world by 2050. The plan means that EU countries would not emit CO2 anymore by 2050, or at least that all emissions of CO2, the main "greenhouse gas," would be compensated by planting more trees and introducing carbon capture technologies, which would see the CO2 buried underground. According to the bloc, "the move will also cut premature air pollution deaths by 40 percent."

The 24th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) is taking place on December 2-14 in the Polish city of Katowice. The main goal of the conference participants is to discuss ways of implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement.