Cav's Place

Yesterday, so on the same day when it once again proved how little it truly cares for either public health or the environment by unilaterally renewing the approval for glyphosate for another ten years, the EU decided to criminalize environmental damage “comparable to ecocide”, though the text itself doesn’t actually include the term and excludes certain major sectors, such as fishing. In itself, it also excludes the export of waste, but another agreement, reached today, aims to cover a small part of that by banning the export of plastic waste to non-OECD countries, at least for a while. And I’ll also mention here that another agreement, reached two days ago, aims to curb methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry, though it’ll be a while before this will come into force and even longer before it’ll also apply to imports.
This paints a rather confusing picture, of a body that seems in a rush to boost its “green” image but pretty much always backs down before the industry and alternates between decisions that are obviously awful and others that appear to be steps in the right direction but, on closer inspection, tend to have troubling loopholes and lack “teeth”, as I already mentioned was the case with the Nature Restoration Law. And that’s if they follow through with them at all, since even recent experience shows that they can and will back down even from firm promises. And this “ecocide” legislation isn’t formally approved yet, and even if it will be, member states will still have some time before being required to apply it and ways to reduce the penalties, which I’m pretty sure they’ll make full use of. So, while it may look like a stage victory for the Stop Ecocide campaign, I’d say wait and see, keeping in mind what just happened for End the Cage Age.