International aviation is on course for a rough landing in our warming world. Air travel is growing rapidly -- and so are aviation emissions, which are already responsible for 5 percent of the warming effect of global greenhouse gas emissions.
"The role of the Commission in advancing the road pricing agenda cannot be underestimated", T&E Director Jos Dings stated at the Conference on fair and efficient road pricing organised by the European Commission on 5 Dec:
Road pricing is progressing because the list of its advantages is impressive. No wonder ever more countries in Europe are choosing for road user charging, and we are having a conference about its future.
This blog is part 2 of an analysis of 20 years of CO2 emission trends in transport (1990-2010) as recently published by the European Environment Agency. The first blog focused on overall trends, and on aviation and shipping. In this post Jos Dings, T&E director, looks into individual countries’ performance, in particular when set next to their economic performance, and challenges the common belief that, after all, transport emissions are an almost inevitable by-product of economic growth.
This briefing from BirdLife Europe, CEE Bankwatch, Friends of the Earth Europe, T&E and WWF explains how EU transport spending under the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) and Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programmes could be made more effective, economically viable and sustainable.A full-length version of this analysis is also available.
Opinion
By Jos Dings
T&E Director
We always felt the economic crisis, with its associated scarcity of public money, could bring about more than just misery. We thought it could be the trigger for positive reforms towards more sustainable transport. And there are now signs that things are slowly starting to move in this direction.
Opinion by Jos Dings - T&E Director
Did we miss something? Last year, the European Commission didn’t propose a single new legislative measure to clean up transport. To be fair, it has been spending most of its time worrying about the future of the Eurozone. As a result, for T&E this was the sort of year where seeds for smarter transport policy were sown. We’re optimistic that next year could bring a decent crop of positive changes.
A new report launched today by seven green NGOs proposes concrete solutions to put an end to environmentally harmful subsidies within the EU Budget. In this time of austerity, European taxpayers' money is not delivering what it should, such as public goods and the well-being of Europe's citizens. Our key challenges in tackling climate change, biodiversity loss and resource inefficiency need to be prioritised ahead of funding for unnecessary infrastructure projects and the subsidising of intensive agriculture.