EU’s Green Deal threatens seismic shift

Proposals to achieve net zero promise to turn bloc’s economy upside down

Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming president of the European Commission, unveiled at the start of her tenure a 30-year project that aims at nothing less than the total transformation of Europe’s economy into a zero-carbon and sustainable system that will help achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement.  The headlines are bold: to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; to build a ‘circular’ economy that uses fewer resources and recycles and reuses more; to develop climate-neutral transport systems; to ‘green’ the agricultural sector; to double or triple the rate of building renovation across the bloc; to eliminate toxins emitted during production; and to reverse biodiversity lo