EU Promises and Goals vs Reality
Unlike the US where Trump wants nothing to green deals, the EU has made a number of pie in the sky promises.
Eurointelligence, mocks the promises in Reasons to be Wary of the Green Deal.
In theory, green technology could be to Europe what digital has been to the US and what artificial intelligence promises to be for China. We have our doubts, though. The EU is clearly overselling the green deal. The green share in EU projects is vastly exaggerated through dubious rounding-up practices, a creative accounting method that would land you in prison if you tried it on your tax returns. The EU has still not kicked the habits of the Juncker investment plan: a castle in the air combining hype and leveraged aspirations.
The hard bit is not setting ambitious targets, like the recently proposed 55% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 relative to 1990. We noted an article in FAZ this morning by Hendrik Kafsack, who points out that this target requires, at a minimum, the following sectors to be completely CO2-emissions-free: energy production, traffic, buildings, and almost the entire manufacturing economy. He writes that the EU has picked all the low-hanging fruit, but has yet to take the tough decisions. De-carbonisation will be very expensive. And these decisions will only be made if the rest of the world adopts the same targets. Otherwise, production will simply relocate.
We agree with Kafsack that a CO2 border tax is absolutely required to prevent this relocation. We also agree with him that emissions trading is probably the best instrument to achieve the target. Sectoral micromanagement, of the car industry for example, has become necessary because the system is not working as expected.
Eurointelligence supports much of this nonsense, but at least they are realistic about things.
Unless and until China is willing to act, nothing is going to happen.
It’s easy to make goals and promises, but the costs are enormous and it’s impossible to make targets for others.
Meanwhile, technology advances are doing quite nicely on their own accord. In contrast to what Green New Deal advocates say, the world will not end in 10 years even if we do nothing at all.
For discussion of the costs, please see AOC’s Green New Deal Pricetag of $51 to $93 Trillion vs. Cost of Doing Nothing
.
Also see AOC “New Green Deal” Stunningly Absurd: Far More Ridiculous Than Expected
By the way, how many years ago was it that Green New Deal advocates said the world would end in 10 years?
Mish
You know an official has no accountability when openly stating a policy they support will result in greater unemployment and economic slowdown.
“Green Deal Promises That Will Not Be Met”
It isn’t about climate change. It is about imposing socialism world wide.
When Oxford students complained about fossil fuel investments by the university, they were told the fossil fuel heat to their dorms could be shut off. It upset the students.
Virtue signalling was cheap. The students would rather stay warm than actually “fight climate change.”
I wonder how many democrat voters complained when their electricity was shut off for a while during the recent heat wave here in California. It is what they asked for.
This time wasn’t too bad, but it will likely get worse in the future.
After the Explosion in Beruit, an L.A. Times reporter there, stood in front of the local power company, noting it was not a favorite of the locals, as they only had electricity a few hours a day.
How about simply agreeing to crack down on flaring and require methane recapture instead of burning it off and duming it into the atmosphere instead of trying to end the use of carbon based energy tomorrow why not make it safer and clearner. Coal’s days may be numbered but we will need to use natural gas for years to come. why not do it better?
Solar and wind simply can’t be the source of 100% of our energy needs anytime soon
“Solar and wind simply can’t be the source of 100% of our energy needs anytime soon.”
Wind and sun are intermittent. Energy is needed 24 hours a day. Windmills and solar panels only last for up to 25 years. No one is talking about the huge future disposal problem for both.
solar and wind when combined with battery storage which is fast evolvin will solve this problem
Mish – I disagree.
The US is becoming a more self centered, individualistic, what’s-in-it-for-me society, while at the same time denying self responsibility – “Unless and until China is willing to act, nothing is going to happen”, for example. We face numerous global issues that threaten our collective well being. While I hope none of these issues results in catastrophe in the next ten years, the US should show proactive leadership to help ensure they don’t result in catastrophe. Avoiding personal responsibility by stating “the world will not end in 10 years even if we do nothing at all” is flat out sending the wrong message. We need to learn to work together again, both nationally, and internationally, instead of divisively. Biden and Harris are well suited to this task, unlike Trump and the Republican party that have entirely failed. We are much stronger collectively than divided, but this must be based on a foundation of self-responsibility.
Collectivism fails.
Democrats love to virtue signal, while taking no personal responsibility. My community is going to vote democrat. I used to get mailings from the city utility comparing my electricity usage to other similar households. I always came in at the lowest 5-7% of usage.
Why can’t all the democrat voters in the city have a similar low amount of electrical usage i have? Why do they need the government to force them to do what they can do on their own?
Harrison Ford virtue signals while flying fossil fuel airplanes just for fun. He and other Democrat elites think they are exempt. It is the middle class and the poor that will suffer, while the elites will continue to do as they please. Pelosi will not give up her giant refrigerators to fight climate change.
China produces more than 2x the amount of CO2 we produce. More than the US and Europe combined. So whatever we do will have little effect unless China does something too.
There is a higher chance some large coastal cities get permanently flooded by 2050 before we go climate neutral. Some people are gonna decompose in the ocean for eons.
New York City was built on the site of a huge glacier.
There is no such thing as climate neutral.
Sea level rise at about an inch a decade.
I think we can go back to the late 80’s when we had 15 years or else…
Promises may not be met in the end. but it’s better to make some good faith efforts in trying to solve the problem, than pretending that the problem does not exist.
Is it? Sometimes cures are worse than the disease. We should react, but not over-react.
Was just going to say in my wordy writing style, spending on good faith efforts is known in business as capital allocation, and misallocation because your estimates were off can kill any business. In spite of entities like the ECB and Fed capital is not unlimited. What if warming is more of a natural cycle that our CO2 contribution is merely speeding up rather than causing? We will have misallocated trillions to solve a problem that ultimately cannot be solved via money and lifestyle changes, just as we need that same capital to deal with the ramifications of warming and which will no longer be there because it was all spent on trying to stop the unstoppable. We are GROSSLY overestimating our ability to allay warming. Ninety percent of the global population lives in littoral regions and will have to relocate at peak flooding from warming if the scientists are correct. Have you got any concept of how expensive it will be to move 90% of all people inland?
Even if we do manage to shrink each carbon footprint by 20-30% or more that win will just be swamped by the sheer increase in the number of footprints, because as I have said here before, humans are not happy unless they are screwing their way into towering overpopulation.
Just yesterday I was reading that scientists are now saying the technology exists to triple the population and energy wise we can meet that demand with green tech. Really? Even if rare earths were plentiful and well distributed that just would not be so because it is not just about electric production. We can barely meet demand for food now with an average of just 50 days supply for the planet even at 7.8 billion people and that number is ominously dropping.
We have polluted and fished out our lakes, seas, and rivers. We have about one third of the USA – a million square miles – under agricultural production of one kind or another. and that even includes some very marginal land that should not have been put under the plow. We pretty much have maxed out that use. And as sea levels rise we will lose a lot of that productive land.
Even at current population whole species are dying as their habitats are degraded and destroyed. Oh right I forgot, we can all just eat tofu. YUK! Is the culinary equivalent of wet cardboard. Oh and would likely end humanity, tofu is concentrated soybean curd LOADED with phytoestragens, you might as well take a birth control pill with your morning cereal. Not too harmful (supposedly but then what about breast cancer?) for females but devastating for men’s health and hormonal balance.
Ordering us all to eat this shit, end private transport, live far lower standards of living, just so people can breed the planet into oblivion is not acceptable.
Another air alert day here in the West as millions of acres of carbon based plants and trees get oxidized.
“Another air alert day here in the West as millions of acres of carbon based plants and trees get oxidized…”
Mainly due to poor forest management for decades on end.
Those would be federally managed forests. Turns out most of the forests are all federal lands.
Just rake the damned forests!
55% reduction … target requires, at a minimum, the following sectors to be completely CO2-emissions-free: energy production, traffic, buildings, and almost the entire manufacturing economy.
So what does that leave for the other 45%? Agriculture, ships, and aviation?
I must be missing a huge energy consumer…
Obviously road vehicles account for a lot, maybe a majority, so getting private transport off fossil fuels is a big step forward. But pound for pound goods and people moved by air is the biggest polluter by far. We have gotten away from trains which might look dirty with their diesel engines, but given the sheer mass of what they move is about as clean as any form of transport. So why do we subsidize air and republicans in the US have done their best to snuff the last of life out of rail? And another thing, online shopping, it has increased distribution of goods and the toll on the environment by leaps and bounds. If the environmental costs of driving around and delivering all those packages were priced in rather than subsidized, online shopping would end today full stop. That is why I only buy about 4 or 5 times per year online, for things not locally available at all. If you save a few bucks on the price only to have a $8.99 shipping charge added on then you saved nothing. My experince is shopping online might be more convenient but it is most certainly NOT cheaper once shipping is included, and even that does not cover the damages to our environment.
Agriculture produces a lot of C02. Cows and Pigs fart/burp a lot more than humans. Replanting new plants every year greatly reduces CO2 consumed by plants. And farming is very energy intensive with lots of water pumps and tractors.
Looks like we’re on track for the Soylent Green Deal though.
Boy, where to even start on this one. It’s a can of of worms.
There is a lot to say about climate change, the importance of reducing C02….how to get there, how delusional most politicians are…..how delusional a lot of citizens are.
First, you are 100% right. Nobody is hitting the marks on the promises made….it’s almost a joke, but climate change is a real problem and having some goals…is probably better than no goals at all.
“Green Energy” is largely a bogus idea…the math often doesn’t quite work….embedded energy and EROEI are real things that matter. Too many people involved in green energy can’t even define those terms.
And like all government programs, it tends to become a conduit scheme to make some people rich…..off the taxpayers’ money.
And it sounds good to people who are concerned….but math-challenged.
The only way we get anywhere near any decent goals is using the new smaller nukes that aren’t so environmentally problematic. Korea is building what look like much improved nukes. That’s good, Environmentalists hate nukes for good reason….but most of them aren’t offering to give up, say….electricity in their house……in order to meet carbon emission goals. So small nuclear reactors that can be passively cooled….that’s a step forward.
Okay..now….on the part about how many years it’s been since the world was supposed to end in ten years…..let me speak to that.
Everybody…or almost everybody involved with climate change is either lying or doesn’t understand the real story. Extinction Rebellion and that crowd are campaigners, not truth-tellers. They are blatant liars, in fact.
Plenty of liars on the denial side too.
And the “concerned scientists” are eager to make sure they aren’t on the wrong side of the argument… contrarians can’t even get published anymore. Our science establishment has lost objectivity. Peer reviewed journals are not impartial anymore. Politics trumps objectivity in science these days, and that leads to a lot of lousy science.
The real bottom line….as I understand it…..(and I am not completely ignorant…I read the summaries of ALL the IPCC reports….and some good contrarian views too)…..is this:
The big risk is not that the world will end in ten years (bullshit)…..or that we will be unable to grow ample food due to temperature increases (bullshit). The real risk is that there are real tipping points in this climate system we call our atmosphere…..that once passed, will result in IRREVERSIBLE changes..that won’t play out for decades or even centuries…..but will EVENTUALLY make the earth unlivable for humans…..in the very long run.
And I guarantee you nobody alive now knows EXACTLY where those tipping points are…or whether we might have passed them already. End of story.
The data does clearly support a 3 degree rise for every doubling of CO2 concentration, which means we ought to try to reduce emissions, if we can.
How to walk the line between reducing carbon emissions and maintaining something like a modern civilization…..that is the challenge. Can we even do that? Frankly, I have no idea.
How small are the nukes in aircraft carriers and submarines? Why don’t we have those underneath the local football field?
Subs and aircraft carries have access to unlimited cooling, they are ocean going. The main limitation on fission nuclear power aside from the rarity of fissionable materials is water for cooling. That is why nukes are almost always on oceans, lakes, or large rivers. “Due to its location in the Arizona desert, Palo Verde is the only nuclear generating facility in the world that is not located adjacent to a large body of above-ground water. The facility evaporates water from the treated sewage of several nearby municipalities to meet its cooling needs.” Three other units designed for that station were cancelled for lack of water.
Mind you, the interface between water and land is almost always higher risk to storms and earthquakes. Rivers are subject to low flow in droughts.
Every steam plant needs to be adjacent to a large body of water. Not just nuclear. You need to condense the steam downstream from the turbines or else the whole thing won’t work.
I agree nuclear makes the most sense. Newer technologies are almost completely melt-down proof. They need water for the reaction to work, not just to cool the rods in the primary loop. If the cooling fails, the nuclear reaction fails along with it.
My reply to story box has returned also.
Well…I’m just reading for Spain. There the deficit this year is going to be somewhere over 10%, but next year it’s “all good” with an up yours V . Obviously there is a lot of fudge in the numbers by accounting – less tax revenue this year and lower gdp with spending pushed forward accounted for one year but taking effect later etc. etc. and could not be bothered to even try to figure it all out. Anyway they have new funds backed by other european countries and negative rate euro so they will spend. 37% of outside funds will go to “ecological transition” and a third to “digital transition” – that is of 140 bn over three years or @ 14% gdp. This is going to “create 800 000 new jobs” according to gov. in the article (linked below) . I guess that is that many more people state employed no ? We have experience of state projects in Spain, lots of experience 🙁 . That many jobs is roughly 3% of the active population I think.
It gets even more confusing once you look at employment level. NOT counting those furloughed there were 21 mn people inactive in whatever way and 14 mn employed in Q2 . That was lockdown, so… but businesses continue getting ruined, and since early this year.
The reality is what then ? For sure much higher unemployment into next year, businesses and debt failure overhang, higher spending on subsidy lower revenue… and Spain was around 100% debt to gdp before all this. I guess they will take whatever money is within sight and pretend to manage the country until somewhere north either says enough or moves in for the firesale/rescue etc….the glam will be all about modernisation going on and a new attitude and management… but they couldn’t really even if they tried, I think – not that the north is that much better, nor that their own traditional form of discipline was inadequate.
So I wonder what this all looks like for other countries, have not seen them compared wrt the last half year in the above way.
My reply box is back thank you. Boris’s latest plan. I can’t see him hitting his target either.
Boris Johnson: Wind farms could power every home by 2030 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54421489