“Our timing is good, after the COVID crisis,” Convention member Sylvain Burquier told the daily Le Monde. ![]() Proposals included, among many other things, lower speed limits on freeways, requiring shops to turn off their lights at night, and that by 2023 all manufactured goods sold in France should be repairable.Īs in the U.K., some of their suggestions – a ban on domestic flights on routes served by low-carbon road and rail links, and allowing white-collar workers and civil servants to work from home one day a week – have been given greater weight by the pandemic.įrench Ecology Minister Élisabeth Borne welcomed the convention’s “ambition,” promising that its work would be “at the heart” of President Emmanuel Macron’s post-pandemic reconstruction plan. They ranged from the largely theoretical – calling for a referendum on whether to enshrine the fight against climate change in the French constitution – to the day-to-day practical. The representative panel of 150 citizens presented a wide range of proposals aimed at cutting emissions by 40% by 2030, compared with a 1990 baseline. report came one day after France’s national climate convention issued its recommendations for how France can build a low-carbon economy. Nearly all the members, who were chosen to reflect a demographic balance, as well as a wide range of public views on climate change, agreed that employers should “take steps to encourage lifestyles to change to be more compatible with reaching net zero,” while 79% agreed that the U.K.’s economic stimulus package should be designed to meet the same goal. assembly’s final report is due in September Monday’s interim report focused on COVID-19’s effects on their deliberations. “You don’t get to zero by locking yourself in and not going out,” he says.Īnd as economies get back into gear, carbon emissions are likely to resume their upward trajectory, even as pernicious warming effects ripple from Australia to the Arctic. In recent months, global emissions of greenhouse gases have fallen so sharply that scientists predict a decline this year of around 8%, the biggest since World War II.īut shutting down the world economy – which may be necessary to cope with a health crisis – is not a sustainable path to a low-carbon world, says Gernot Wagner, a professor of environmental studies at New York University. That vexed question of how to align pandemic-era economics and climate goals resonates beyond the U.K. We shouldn’t go back to where we were before,” said one assembly member quoted in the report issued Monday.Įducation owes a lot to parents. “With planning and a bit of structure we can tackle both climate and COVID. The assembly report adds to a growing chorus of voices in Britain urging the government to pave a green path to economic recovery, while also encouraging people to keep some of the habits they developed during lockdowns. ![]() “We believe that a similar approach, based on securing public support for ambitious policies through open dialogue around the science, is a sound basis for the net zero journey,” they wrote. In a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the leaders of six parliamentary committees that set up the assembly noted the public’s willingness to heed government advice and act collectively to fight a deadly virus. For many in Europe, that realization offers hope for climate change.Įditor’s note: As a public service, all our coronavirus coverage is free. The pandemic has made clear we will change our lifestyles in an emergency.
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