EU warns deadly flooding and wildfires show climate breakdown is fast becoming the norm

Devastating floods through much of Central Europe and deadly wildfires in Portugal are joint proof of a “climate breakdown” that will become the norm unless drastic action is taken, the European Union's head office said Wednesday.

“Make no mistake. This tragedy is not an anomaly. This is fast becoming the norm for our shared future,” said EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic.

The worst flooding in years moved Tuesday across a broad swath of Central Europe, taking lives and destroying homes. At the other end of the 27-nation EU, raging fires through northern Portugal have killed at last six people.

“Europe is the fastest warming continent globally and is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events like the one we are discussing today. We could not return to a safer past,” Lenarcic told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France.

He warned that beyond the human cost, nations are also struggling to cope with mounting bills for repairing the damage from emergencies and the lengthy recovery from disaster.

“The average cost of disasters in the 1980s was 8 billion euros per year. More recently in 2021 and in 2022, the damage is surpassed 50 billion euros per year, meaning the cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of action,” he said.

Terry Reintke, president of the Greens group in the European Parliament, said the cost for the EU since the 1980s was estimated at 650 billion euros.

The EU is struggling to move quickly with measures to counter climate change and has run into political opposition in many member states, where the political climate is turning against environmental issues and measures ranging from home heating to farm pollution.

“Our success will depend on how determined we are to combat climate change together in order to reduce emissions,” Reintke said, adding that EU members must back its Green Deal.

The vast EU plan to become climate neutral by 2050 has come under increasing pressure from critics who call it unrealistic and too expensive. Populist and far-right parties have made it a key point of attack on the bloc's institutions.

Lenarcic said people only needed to follow the daily news to understand the urgency of the issue.

“We face a Europe that is simultaneously flooding and burning. These extreme weather events ... are now an almost annual occurrence,” he said. “The global reality of the climate breakdown has moved into the everyday lives of Europeans.”