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'Nature doesn't bargain': #GretaThunberg says EU law to tackle climate change is 'surrender'

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg
Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg branded the EU's legislation to tackle climate change as "surrender".

She said its Green Deal package of measures gives the world "much less than a 50 per cent chance" to limit global warming to 1.5℃

"You admit that you are giving up, on the Paris agreement, on your promises and on doing what you can to ensure a safe future for your own children," Thunberg told MEPs. "This climate law is surrender. Nature doesn't bargain, and you cannot make deals with physics."

"Your distant targets will mean nothing if high emissions continue like today, even for just a few more years, because that will use up our remaining carbon budget before we even have the chance to deliver on your 2030 or 2050 goals," she explained.

Thunberg said "no policy, plan or deal will be nearly enough" as long as the bloc "continues to ignore CO2 budgets which apply for today".

"Pretending a law that no one has to follow is a law, pretending that you can be climate leader and still go on building and subsidizing new fossil fuel infrastructure, pretending that empty words will make this emergency go away... this must come to an end", she said.

She called for the EU to lead the way forward, citing the bloc's moral obligation to do so: "You have a real political and economical opportunity to become a real climate leader. You said this was an existential threat, now you must prove that you mean it."

The EU Green Deal legislation will set targets to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050.

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"This means achieving net-zero emissions for EU countries as a whole, mainly by cutting emissions, investing in green technologies and protecting the natural environment", according to the European Commission.

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