Time November 2/November 9, 2020
THE ART
OF THE
GREEN DEAL
Europe wants to fight
climate change as it
rebuilds. Will Poland’s
coal country get on board?
By Justin Worland/
Katowice, Poland
The landscape
surrounding a
coal mine in the
Polish region of
Silesia in 1978
THE GREAT RESET
iT’s winTer in The souTh of Poland, buT The
ground is clear of any snow, and the thick clouds don’t
carry any precipitation. Instead, the skies have been
darkened by a layer of smog. The culprit is coal, and if
there was any doubt, it would be dispelled by the 50-mile drive across
the countryside from historic Krakow to the industrial city of
Katowice. Lining the highway, there are the coal-processing facilities,
where the rock is cleaned and prepared for use. Smokestacks jut into
the sky, marking the country’s coal-fired power plants. Even the
homes, visible from the highway, have a faint gray-colored exhaust,
the result of the coal being used for heat.
The pollution is a blight; Katowice ranks among the most
polluted cities in Europe, and locals complain about the low air
quality. But even so, many here aren’t ready to let go of the natural
resource that has powered the nation’s economy since the Industrial
Revolution. Culture in Katowice—and in smaller cities and towns in
the surrounding province of Silesia—developed around the mines,
from the soccer clubs sponsored by the mining companies to the
local festivals they supported. Strikes at Silesian coal mines played
a key role in the uprising that brought democracy to Poland in the
1980s. Today, the mines still occupy a place of reverence to many of
the region’s residents. A 131-ft. former mine-shaft tower sits near
the city center, and at the adjacent Silesian Museum, visitors can
walk away with souvenir coal paraphernalia. “People may not like
it, but they also need to acknowledge the good side,” says former
underground coal miner Marek Wystyrk over coffee in Katowice
when TIME visited in December 2018. “It’s not all evil.”
Katowice, with a population around 300,000, may seem like an
odd place to look to understand the future of the European Union.
But as the E.U. seeks to turn its recovery from the corona virus pan-
demic into a moment to pivot to a greener future, this city and myriad
others built upon a fossil-fuel economy face a reckoning. The E.U.
actually began as an alliance around coal and steel production. But
that was 70 years ago, and now the
union is attempting to unite against
the threat of climate change.
The plan is simple yet bold. In
December, the E.U. outlined plans
to spend what would total €1 trillion
($1.17 trillion) on a “Green Deal”
aimed at eliminating the bloc’s car-
bon footprint by 2050 and refash-
ioning the economy around new,
low-carbon industries. The invest-
ment, originally meant to be funded
through the E.U. budget, private-sec-
tor financing and other country con-
tributions, includes everything from
retrofitting buildings to scaling up
the infrastructure necessary for elec-
tric vehicles to investing in hydrogen-
energy storage. After the pandemic
struck, the E.U. structured its COVID-
19 recovery package around acceler-
ating the plan. “We need to change
how we treat nature, how we produce
and consume, live and work, eat and
heat, travel and transport,” said Ur-
sula von der Leyen, president of the
European Commission, the E.U.’s ex-
ecutive body, in a September speech.
Bold moves to address climate
change are broadly popular— polling
has shown more than 90% of E.U.
citizens support aggressive action
on climate change—but any serious
measure to tackle the issue faces one
big challenge: the many regions and
industries across the Continent that
remain reliant on heavy industry
and fossil fuels. So officials in Brus-
sels crafted a so-called Just Transi-
tion plan to direct some €150 billion
($177 billion) to the regions most vul-
nerable to a move away from fossil
fuels. The money is intended to act
both as a catalyst for these regions
to adapt and as an insurance policy
PHOTOGRAPH BY
MICHAL CALA
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