Start planning for catastrophic global warming, top advisers tell EU

BRUSSELS — The EU must start drawing up concrete plans to cope with life on a continent made 4 degrees Celsius hotter by climate change, the bloc’s scientific advisers said Tuesday. 

That would mean accepting that the world is on track for a catastrophic temperature increase that will far exceed the targets agreed under the Paris climate accord and will massively disrupt life for Europeans.

“Europe’s climate is rapidly changing. It is not a distant or an abstract risk,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, the chair of the European scientific advisory board on climate change.

As the planet warms, weather extremes such as floods and droughts are posing a growing threat to Europe’s society, economy and ecosystems. In recent years, tens of thousands of Europeans have died in heat waves and hundreds more when rivers burst their banks; the annual repair bill for climate disasters has reached an average of €45 billion. 

But the EU’s efforts to prepare for both current and future impacts of global warming are insufficient and fragmented, lacking a coherent vision, Edenhofer warned.

“The EU lacks a shared understanding of what it should collectively prepare for, leading to inconsistent climate risk assessments that often undermine risk management,” he said. 

In the board’s view, the bloc should protect itself on the assumption that the continent will be 4 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100 than in the pre-industrial era. The advice echoes a recent French government plan to prepare for a 4C hotter France. 

Aside from establishing a common baseline of preparations, the board recommends four other measures to climate-proof Europe — from setting binding preparation targets to suggesting the EU plan its budget around climate risks. 

With their requests for more targets and assessments, many of the board’s recommendations run counter to the deregulation fever gripping Brussels. In the report, the researchers even reprimand the EU executive for weakening green reporting requirements.

Yet the board’s advice, an independent consortium of senior scientists tasked by EU law with issuing climate policy guidance, often proves influential. Its 2023 report recommending an emissions-slashing target of at least 90 percent by 2040 played a major role in pushing the bloc’s institutions to adopt that figure as their goal. 

The report on preparing for climate risks — called adaptation in policy-speak — is also timely: The Commission is working on a new “framework” for climate-proofing Europe, expected toward the end of the year.

“Our recommendations are aimed at the upcoming legislation,” Edenhofer said. 

Adapt to survive

While the EU has extensive legislation in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, no targets or policies exist for adaptation. 

That’s in part because it’s tricky to draft continent-level policies for climate impacts, which differ in severity and classification not only across the bloc’s 27 countries but also within their borders. Southern Europe faces greater threats from heat than northern countries, and a nation’s coastal towns will need to cope with different risks than mountainous hinterlands. 

But emissions-slashing efforts, known in policy jargon as mitigation, have also generally received more attention and investment, as they seek to tackle the root cause of climate change, while adaptation addresses its symptoms. 

Scientists insist both are needed. “The success of global mitigation efforts is … critical to determine future temperature increases and the magnitude of the global risks,” said Edenhofer. “Adaptation can reduce climate risk and associated harms.” 

For example, southern Europe’s droughts will become more frequent and intense the higher global temperatures rise — according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), more than a third of the region’s population will face water scarcity at 2C of global warming, while 3C doubles this share. Curbing warming limits this risk. 

To address the remaining risk, countries can introduce adaptation measures — such as having farmers switch to more drought-resistant crops or managing water use. The worse the warming gets, the greater the danger that regions and economic sectors will no longer be able to adapt. 

All the EU has for now is a vague adaptation strategy from 2021. Most EU countries have national adaptation plans or laws with relevant elements, but both the European Environment Agency and the European Court of Auditors have warned that legislation varies wildly across the bloc and that some strategies are based on outdated scientific findings. 

Worst-case scenario

That’s not good enough, the advisory board says. Among the five recommendations, the scientists want the EU to develop a coherent vision with “sector-specific adaptation targets, for example for 2030 and 2040,” and to find ways to manage the rising economic costs of climate disasters, for example, through budgetary and insurance mechanisms.

This must be based on a common reference scenario, the scientists say, recommending the EU prepare for a global warming of between 2.8 C and 3.3 C above pre-industrial levels — consistent with projections that “imply around 4C warming for Europe,” Edenhofer said.

The “precautionary principle” requires the EU to prepare for that scenario and it should also “stress-test” its planning against even higher warming scenarios, Edenhofer said, given the uncertainties around global efforts to cut emissions.

The United States is notably currently reversing course on its emissions-slashing plans. 

The report also criticized the Commission for its deregulation drive.

The Commission’s first omnibus package aimed at simplifying environmental legislation exempted the majority of EU companies from having to report on the threat climate change poses to their business models, for example. This, the researchers say, “may weaken the oversight and management of climate risks in the wider EU economy.”