People in southern Spain and Italy are being advised to stay indoors this week. Fires and floods are wreaking havoc across the globe.
And we had this headline in the Irish Times last week: "EU politicians pass vote on controversial Nature Restoration Law."
Controversial?
Here, in part, is what the Times reported: "The European Parliament approved the landmark Nature Restoration Law on Wednesday, clearing the green legislation to proceed to the final stretch of negotiations after a rebellion by Fine Gael against its political group helped defeat an attempt to kill the law.
"Fine Gael’s centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) led an effort to reject the law outright in the vote of all MEPs in the plenary session, but this failed in a knife-edge result after it was backed by 312 MEPs, while 324 voted against rejecting the Bill.
The law would require EU countries to develop national plans for how to contribute to putting in place restoration measures across 20 percent of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030, including the voluntary rewetting of peatlands, restoring marine habitats, and allowing blocked rivers to flow.
"All Irish MEPs voted against rejecting the Nature Restoration Law, including all five Fine Gael lawmakers. They were among 15 members of the 176-strong EPP to rebel against an effort to reject the Bill that had been spearheaded by the group’s parliament leader Manfred Weber."
Hooray for Ireland. Hooray for Fine Gael.
Not that Ireland is actually a shining standout when it comes to nature and the environment but at this stage anything helpful is, well, helpful.
The parliament actually voted on a series of amendments before approving a compromise version of the law, which was approved by 336 votes in favor compared to 300 against.
The result, according to the Times report, means that the law is now clear to proceed to the final stretch of negotiations between the parliament and EU member states to hammer out the last version of the legislation.
Ireland's Green Party credited the survival of the law to the pressure of thousands of citizens, businesses, scientists, and NGOs who contacted MEPs about it.
So hooray for them too.
The law would require EU countries to develop national plans for how to contribute to putting in place restoration measures across 20 percent of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030, including the voluntary rewetting of peatlands, restoring marine habitats, and allowing blocked rivers to flow.
The Guardian newspaper reported that the EU had "narrowly passed a key law to protect nature – a core pillar of the Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s European Green Deal – after months of fiery debate and an opposition campaign scientists criticised as misleading."
Stated the Guardian report: "Nature is dying faster than humans have ever known, a landmark scientific assessment found in 2019, driven by climate change, pollution and the way people exploit the land and sea. The restoration law aims to reverse this trend and help the bloc hit biodiversity targets it has previously failed to meet."
The report added: “I cannot in good conscience, good faith, vote against this law,” said Frances Fitzgerald, an Irish MEP and the vice-chair of the EPP, in a video posted to Twitter shortly before the vote. “We should have a constructive approach.”
Fitzgerald is a member of the newly minted Fine Gael Eco Warrior caucus.
So, in the end, the compromise made it through the obstacle course. The EU member states, you can bet, will all have their own ideas and restoring nature might not be on top of the list for some of them. As the Irish Times headline indicated, restoring nature is "controversial."
Hard to believe given all that is going on in the world of, yes, ever vanishing nature. So here's a future headline to consider: "World Politicians Pass Vote on Controversial Planet Saving Law."
That night sound a little out there, but not if you're huddled indoors trying to stay cool, or outdoors breathing smoke and wondering where all the birds and bees have gone.
