Race2Paris
Shifting Gears for Climate Action: Transforming Europe's Transportation
In many European countries, the transport sector will determine whether or not a country can achieve the climate policy turnaround.
While the clock is ticking in the race to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, Europe’s national transport sectors stand out due to their failure to achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks to fossil interest groups and their allies, relevant policymakers, representatives of the corporate constituencies, and the corresponding lobbies and advocacy groups have successfully resisted taking necessary measures in many areas of the transport system. Obstructive activities are growing across Europe despite the escalating climate crisis. Unprecedented heat waves and severe repercussions of droughts, fires on the one hand, and floods on the other hand, are already affecting communities across Europe much like in the rest of the world.
With our Race2Paris report, we examine several relevant characteristics of the development of the transportation sector in the EU and in seven European countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. In order to push social-ecological solutions for the decarbonization of the transport sector into public policy debates across Europe, this project should bring together expertise from different European countries. Despite global commitments, our findings reveal a disconcerting reality – the transport sectors in these nations lag significantly behind the aspirations of the Paris Agreement, especially when it comes to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
What is needed is a much stronger commitment to the expansion of public transportation services in combination with a European-wide public investment fund to better link national transportation networks between member states across Europe. The aim should be to establish free public transportation for all, and thus significantly reduce the dependence on individualised transport systems based on cars and trucks with combustion engines. This needs to be combined with the implementation of strong disincentives for environmentally damaging transportation practices.
Contact
- Please contact SET-Network via one of the members
- Europe
Europe’s Socio-Ecological Think Tank Network