Burning forests for energy isn’t ‘renewable’ – now the EU must admit it

‘Forests degraded by clearcutting are also more flammable, and in the midst of an accelerating climate crisis, this is a huge risk.’ A clearcut forest in North Carolina, America, where trees are made into wood pellets. Photograph: Matt Adam Williams/PA

Next week the future of many of the world’s forests will be decided when members of the European parliament vote on a revised EU renewable energy directive. If the parliament fails to change the EU’s discredited and harmful renewables policy, European citizens’ tax money will continue to pay for forests around the globe to literally go up in smoke every day.

Europe’s directly elected representatives now have to choose: they can either save the EU’s “climate targets” with their legislative loopholes or they can begin saving our climate, because right now, that is not what EU targets are working towards.