AI Summary
5 min read🎙️ The Voices & The Context
- The Format: This is a casual, conversational podcast between two co-hosts. It feels like a thoughtful, informed chat between friends who are deeply concerned about climate policy.
- The Key Players:
- Karola Böhm: A German academic and mother living in the UK. She brings a European perspective and a sense of urgency to the discussion.
- Rich McCarthy: An "ex lots of things" house husband and jeweling champion. He provides the grounded, practical, and often skeptical counterpoint, with a dry wit.
- The Vibe: Educational & Frustrated. The tone is one of serious concern mixed with a palpable sense of disappointment that the EU's Green Deal policies on buildings and transport are not ambitious enough. It's a "let's get real" kind of energy.
🗝️ Key Themes & Topics
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **🎙️ Introduction: Karola Böhm & Rich McCarthy**
- 2 (03:06) **Building and Renovation: The Renovation "Dribble"**
- 3 (10:32) **EU Instruments for Building Renovation**
- 4 (19:43) **Sustainable Mobility: Transport Emissions Breakdown**
- 5 (25:28) **The Single European Sky and Aviation**
- 6 (30:37) **Pricing Mechanisms and Final Assessment**
- 7 (34:15) **Preview of Next Episode: Climate Action**
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Rich and Carola have accepted the fact that the EU will probably implement their whole Green Deal before the Dithering Team finishes reviewing it. But undaunted by the extensiveness of the deal, they soldier through two policy areas which should be so much more at the heart of any green economy than the Green Deal makes them out to be: Building & Renovation, and Sustainable Mobility.
However, Carola and Rich are not impressed by these two expressions of policy-oriented interventions. If the EU Green Deal is supposed to shift behaviour of member states to chose more green solutions for mobility (and area that represents 70% of green house gases), or initiate that lauded “renovation wave”, as discussed in the EU policies, these policy areas and their targets are so humble that Carola wonders if the EU really means business or if it’s caught in that ever enduring tension between sovereignty and unity. It poses the question of whether ‘politically doable’ is just not enough to save the planet. As Rich says, “We just got to get real!”
The EU Green Deal covers 9 policy areas, and in the last 3 episodes, Carola and Rich covered the areas of
- Clean Energy
- Farm to Fork
- Biodiversity
- Sustainable Agriculture
- Sustainable Industry
- Eliminating pollution
And in this episode they cover
- Building and Renovation
- Sustainable mobility
Upcoming in the next episode is a big one:
- Climate action
Key Resources
- European Green Deal, Wikipedia Entry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Green_Deal
- A European Green Deal. Striving to be the first climate-neutral continent - https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en
Infographics:
- EC (Dec 2019), The European Green Deal - Building and Renovating -https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/attachment/859198/Building_and_Renovating_en.pdf
- EC (Dec 2019), The European Green Deal - Sustainable Mobility -https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/attachment/860070/Sustainable_mobility_en.pdf