Germany and Italy are the biggest climate laggards in Europe, study finds

Thats so surprising. Merkel doing absolutely nothing for 16 years did not just fuck up digitization, infrastructure, healthcare, schools but also the climate? Who could have guessed.

This is using the German projection reports from the UBA, which is a ministry run by the Greens. Those tend to be overly negative. Last years report projected a rise of German emissions by a few percent, what happened was a drop of 10%. This year they again project rising emissions, but the Q1 data shows a 6.6% drop in emissions, with Q2 electricity data also looking rather decent. Even so the report finds most sectors will be within emission limits. The only ones with problems are buidling, which is mainly heating, and transport. The building sector is projected to be slighly over the emission targets, with some rather important laws having been passed last year, which according to the report close the gap to 96Mt to 32Mt until 2030. Transport is doing much worse however. The gap is massive at 180Mt until 2030 and most laws, which would have a large impact being blocked. To be fair the gap is smaller then the projection from last year at 210Mt.

Point is, that this is pessimistic. However climate change is a massive issue and obviously doing more to cut emissions is the right thing to do.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The European Union is at risk of missing its ambitious climate goals for 2030, and Germany and Italy are largely to blame.

There's just one problem: Germany and Italy could eat up the majority of credits available across the EU, setting up a costly bidding war by other countries that also miss their climate goals.

"Germany and Italy are eating up all available carbon credits from their neighbours, leaving them stranded and at risk of legal proceedings," Sofie Defour, climate director at T&E, said in a statement.

An EU climate law, known as the Effort Sharing Regulation, sets binding emissions reduction targets for each of the bloc's 27 countries.

Attempts by countries including Germany, Italy, and France to slash emissions from agriculture and transportation have sparked protests by farmers and citizens worried they will push up the costs and make EU products more expensive than imports.

Defour said countries face a choice: pay billions to their neighbors for their carbon debt or implement stronger climate policies, such as insulating houses to make them more energy efficient.

The original article contains 355 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Well of course. Germany has been opening coal plants in favor of nuclear plants.