Climate Laws: Legally-Binding Commitments to Create a Cooler Planet, Part 1 of 2

On today’s show, we’ll explore how European Union members are using legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus avoid climate change’s unfortunate consequences. Enacting both local and international climate laws is essential to the process of minimizing or neutralizing the impact of climate change as proposed by the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is a worldwide effort to keep the increase in global temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to attempt to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The EU’s Paris Agreement pledge calls for a nationally determined contribution (NDC) to reducing at least 40% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to address the climate crisis. However, the EU now has the goal of reaching climate neutrality and zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 through its European Climate Law plan. Individually, European Union countries also have national laws to mitigate the impact of climate change. For instance, the Danish Climate Act passed in December 2019 sets a legally binding target for reducing Denmark's emissions by 70 percent before 2030 compared to 1990 levels and for reaching climate neutrality by 2050. New targets are to be set on a five-year basis over the next 10 years. Enacted in June 2015, Finland's Climate Change Act aims to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80% compared to 1990 baseline levels no later than 2050. During a conference in October 2009 in Indonesia, Supreme Master Ching Hai said, as She has on several other occasions, the best solution for our planetary climate crisis is to adopt a compassionate plant-based way of living. “Stopping meat and dairy consumption and fishing, poultry – all the animal products – is the fastest and most effective way to cool our planet and halt these dangerous changes. And now that we also understand the immeasurable benefits for the organic vegan diet, we can simply step forward and implement this solution, which offers not only better personal health, but literally can save the entire planet, the entire world. This is how we can continue to make the vegan lifestyle more popular.”