Euro 2024 fails to score its most important climate goal
As Euro 2024 kicks off, the tournament has been caught offside with some of its climate claims. UEFA must do better to tackle its carbon footprint.
As Euro 2024 kicks off, the tournament has been caught offside with some of its climate claims. UEFA must do better to tackle its carbon footprint.
Tous les quatre ans, le monde se réunit pour célébrer l’événement sportif le plus important, les Jeux olympiques. Les records démontrant les plus grandes performances athlétiques humaines sont battus et célébrés à juste titre, mais alors que l’humanité continue de battre des records de température mondiale beaucoup moins convoités, le rôle des méga-événements doit être mis en évidence, et des cadres organisationnels meilleurs et plus responsables devraient monter sur la plus haute marche du podium.
The world comes together once every four years to celebrate its pinnacle sporting event, the Olympic games. Records demonstrating the greatest human athletic achievements are broken and rightly celebrated, but as humanity continues to smash much less coveted records of global temperatures, the role of mega events has to be highlighted, and better, more responsible organisational frameworks should top the podium.
At a time when global carbon emissions need to be almost halved by 2030, 51 major corporations’ climate commitments amount only to reducing their median carbon footprint by as little as 30%, reveals the 2024 Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor. Tighter regulations from governments are needed to raise the bar, both for companies which are taking insufficient action, and those who are not doing anything at all.
The European Parliament’s vote on a bill aimed at combating greenwashing upheld a ban on describing products as “carbon neutral” but failed to apply the same principle to companies.
Companies selling in the European Union will no longer be able to claim that their products are carbon or climate neutral, the EU has provisionally agreed. This victory against greenwashing corresponds to longstanding demands from climate campaigners to eliminate the use of offsets and send a signal to the voluntary carbon market.
Misleading and unsubstantiated green claims are widespread and must be addressed. Tackling this ubiquitous problem through the GCD (as a complement to the “Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition” (ECGT) proposal) falls short due to the failure to ban one of the most pervasive and contentious green claims – neutrality claims.
In response to a complaint lodged by civil society, the Swiss advertising regulator has ordered FIFA, football’s governing body, to stop describing the 2022 World Cup as “carbon neutral” because the claim is “false and misleading”. This anti-greenwashing victory has worldwide implications for mega-sporting events, corporations and lawmakers.
he European Parliament has demonstrated a strong commitment to both consumer protection and the climate when it voted in favour of a ban on companies making “carbon neutral” claims. The Council of the European Union and the European Commission must support such a prohibition during the ongoing legislative process to review EU consumer protection rules.
Major corporations are making disingenuous ‘net zero’ and ‘carbon neutral’ claims based on dubious emissions offsetting practices rather than actual cuts. This cannot continue.