It is 2040 and the green revolution in the European Union is 90 percent complete.  Climate neutrality is within reach as the bloc has managed to reduce its collective greenhouse gas emissions to a tenth of 1990 levels, in line with a target proposed 16 years ago. 

The result is a transformed continent - no matter how much the EU's leading politicians, weary of regulations and wary of elections, try to play down the consequences in 2024. Getting here was not easy: government coalitions broke up, companies closed and farmers besieged Brussels more than once. (ZIA WEISE
and GIOVANNA COI, more at www.politico.eu)