Europe Is Terrifyingly Hot, and Its Leaders Are Doing Worse Than Nothing

Opinion|Europe Is Terrifyingly Hot, and Its Leaders Are Doing Worse Than Nothing

It’s heat wave season in Europe.

From late June to early this month, temperatures across the continent soared past 100 degrees Fahrenheit, particularly afflicting Spain and France. As wildfires flared and drought loomed, emergency measures kicked in. Nuclear reactors shut down, construction workers were told to stay home, schools canceled whole days of classes, and the Eiffel Tower was closed to visitors. Such stopgaps, though, could only limit the damage. By initial estimates, the 10-day heat wave left some 2,300 dead.

These emergencies are going to keep happening. Not only are we rushing toward devastating global warming but Europe is also heating faster than other regions. This was a time to recognize the need for more resolute action to tackle the root causes of extreme heat and work harder to cut emissions. Europe’s politicians had the chance to prove what they often claim: that the European Union is a world leader on the green transition.

They didn’t take it, mustering only platitudes about staying safe. Instead, Europe’s leaders are pulling back from climate measures they agreed to in years past. Faced with economic challenges and geopolitical mayhem, an emboldened right-wing chorus is claiming that the European Union is doing too much already. Disastrously, European leaders are caving in to these voices. They are reining in their ambitions to green the economy — and delivering their citizens to a terrifyingly hot future.

It’s a real change of mood from just a few years ago. Picked in 2019 as president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, Ursula von der Leyen promised to make the European Green Deal the centerpiece of her agenda. The plan centered on some 1 trillion euros in public and private investment, tied to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. After the pandemic, this became the leading focus for investment funded by the bloc’s collective borrowing. The green transition was not an economic sacrifice, officials claimed, but a key means of safeguarding the continent’s future.

Yet the political coalition on which that deal rested, made up of the E.U.’s traditional center-left and center-right parties, no longer looks so stable. After parliamentary elections last year, it is increasingly threatened by a potential alternative right-wing alliance, made up of a motley array of fiscal hawks, conservatives and hard-right nationalists. These forces are divided on some issues and have no formal agreement. But voting together on some measures, they have shown that they constitute a majority able to block legislation. One nationalist lawmaker is even set to be Parliament’s lead negotiator on an important climate bill.

Hard-right forces have long railed against the Green Deal. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary was quick to dismiss it as a “utopian fantasy”; the far-right Vox, a contender to be part of Spain’s next government, demands its wholesale abandonment. In Rome, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy takes a more nuanced line, speaking a folksy language of protecting nature while resisting plans for industrial adaptation. In her view, such a program would create a “desert” in which “there is nothing green.”