C
Captain Compassion
Guest
Walker's World: Europe's Green wars begin
Published: 28, 2008 at 10:41 AM
By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor Emeritus
http://www.upi.com/International_Se...rld_europes_green_wars_begin/1173/print_view/
WASHINGTON, 28 (UPI) -- It is ironic that Europe, which likes to think
of itself as the center of environmental correctness and the green
revolution, should now be the scene of a sharp political struggle over
its ambitious emissions targets. Indeed, few EU proposals have aroused
quite such a chorus of complaint and derision.
"This is a historic plan to make Europe the first economy on the
post-carbon age," EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the
European Parliament.
The EU is to require its 27 member states to cut their greenhouse gas
emissions by 20 percent by the year 2020, to ensure that 20 percent of
its energy comes from renewable resources like wind and solar. The EU
also aims to have biofuels power at least 10 percent of its transport.
There will also be a bolstered Emissions Trading Scheme, in which the
right to pollute will be auctioned. And if the world's big polluters
like the United States and China do not join in, then the EU may
either give these emissions trading rights free to European firms, or
even apply special "green" tariffs to "dirty" imports.
The predictable results included a strike among Belgian steelworkers,
protests from politicians in almost every EU country, storms in the
media, angry threats from Washington and other countries, and -- less
predictably -- anger from environmental groups.
Europe's Greens pointed out that biofuels may not be the blessing the
EU thought it would be. Biofuels can raise food prices by taking up
arable land and encourage deforestation. It also seems that when the
carbon emissions of the fertilizers and tractors and soil-turning are
all included, biofuels can be just as polluting as gasoline.
"Most biofuels now appear to be worse for the climate than oil," said
Friends of the Earth Europe's Sonja Meister.
"The European Commission's failure to act on the many warnings is
shockingly irresponsible," said Corporate Europe Observatory
spokeswoman Nina Holland.
The Belgian steel workers were equally blunt. "You could call this the
first carbon dioxide industrial action," said Fabrice Jacquemart, a
spokesman for the FGTB union. "There is something utterly absurd about
a policy that creates more unemployment in Europe."
The EU announcement came as Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive
officer of Shell Oil, released the startling warning that "the world's
current predicament limits our room to maneuver. We are experiencing a
step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to rising
population and economic development. After 2015, easily accessible
supplies of oil and gas probably will no longer keep up with demand."
These are the opening shots in what will be a long war, as the world
fails or succeeds over the course of this century in surmounting the
threat of global warming. Barroso claimed these measures would cost
less than $100 billion a year, or about 0.5 percent of the EU's gross
domestic product. As insurance, he claimed, this was cheap at the
price, and the cost of inaction would be many times higher.
That is not the way the media saw it. In Britain, the Daily Mail, the
Daily Telegraph, the Sun, the Daily Express and the Evening Standard
all gave prominence to a report by the Open Europe think tank that the
EU's drive for renewable energy would cost the average family about
$1,500 a year. Others noted the warning from the Greens that the
biofuels policy would make things even worse for the world's poorest
people in the developing world.
Usually sympathetic to the EU and to environmental causes, the
Guardian sniffed that "bits of the plan are disappointing. Why does
the EU insist on wasteful biofuels being used for road transport? It
is hard to see it as anything other than yet another sop to European
farmers."
In Germany, the news magazine Der Spiegel put the headline "A Total
Disaster" on its assessment of the EU's biofuels policy. It reported:
"Paul J. Crutzen, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for chemistry,
estimates that biodiesel produced from rapeseed can result in up to 70
percent more greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels. Corn, the
preferred biofuels crop in the U.S., results in 50 percent more
emissions, Crutzen estimates."
The United States has already warned of the dangers inherent in a
proposal to impose "green tariffs." At last month's meeting in Bali,
Indonesia, that agreed a road map to negotiate the next phase of the
Kyoto protocol against global warming, U.S. Trade Representative Susan
Schwab warned the Europeans that this cold "backfire."
"Restricting imports easily leads to covert protectionism, undermining
both environment and economic standards," she said. "Trade
restrictions that seek to force actions can backfire and lead to
tit-for-tat."
The Americans were not the only ones alarmed. Ujal Singh Bhatia,
India's ambassador to the World Trade Organization, said: "If the
countries imposing such measures invoke GATT provisions to justify
them, the dispute settlement mechanism in (the) WTO would face serious
challenges and create divisions along North-South lines."
While the EU's intentions were evidently high-minded, the result has
been an object lesson in the difficulties the world will face in
agreeing on mechanisms to reduce the threat of global warming.
The EU is not the only body that is mulling this kind of "green
tariff" to force other countries to abide by tough targets to cut
carbon emissions. The U.S. Senate is considering two bills with
similar effect. The bills have strong backing from both the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and from the giant
American Electric power group. The bills are likely to face similar
objections from India and China in the WTO, just as U.S. farm
subsidies for the production of ethanol from corn have aroused growing
opposition from the Green lobbies.
The award of last year's Nobel Peace Prize to former U.S. Vice
President Al Gore and the scientists of the Inter-governmental Panel
on Climate Change symbolized the degree to which there is now a broad
consensus that climate change is a realty, that human activity is a
major cause and that its implications are so dangerous that dramatic
measures will be needed to alleviate its effects. But the reaction to
the EU's proposals showed just how hard and contentious that will be.
--
If you disagree with the theories and dogmas of Marxism or Scientific Socialism
then you are a tool of Capitalist interests. If you disagree with the theories
or dogmas of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming then you are a tool of
Capitalistic interests. Notice a pattern here? -- Captain Compassion
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
"...the whole world, including the United States, including all that
we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark
Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights
of perverted science." -- Sir Winston Churchill
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
Published: 28, 2008 at 10:41 AM
By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor Emeritus
http://www.upi.com/International_Se...rld_europes_green_wars_begin/1173/print_view/
WASHINGTON, 28 (UPI) -- It is ironic that Europe, which likes to think
of itself as the center of environmental correctness and the green
revolution, should now be the scene of a sharp political struggle over
its ambitious emissions targets. Indeed, few EU proposals have aroused
quite such a chorus of complaint and derision.
"This is a historic plan to make Europe the first economy on the
post-carbon age," EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the
European Parliament.
The EU is to require its 27 member states to cut their greenhouse gas
emissions by 20 percent by the year 2020, to ensure that 20 percent of
its energy comes from renewable resources like wind and solar. The EU
also aims to have biofuels power at least 10 percent of its transport.
There will also be a bolstered Emissions Trading Scheme, in which the
right to pollute will be auctioned. And if the world's big polluters
like the United States and China do not join in, then the EU may
either give these emissions trading rights free to European firms, or
even apply special "green" tariffs to "dirty" imports.
The predictable results included a strike among Belgian steelworkers,
protests from politicians in almost every EU country, storms in the
media, angry threats from Washington and other countries, and -- less
predictably -- anger from environmental groups.
Europe's Greens pointed out that biofuels may not be the blessing the
EU thought it would be. Biofuels can raise food prices by taking up
arable land and encourage deforestation. It also seems that when the
carbon emissions of the fertilizers and tractors and soil-turning are
all included, biofuels can be just as polluting as gasoline.
"Most biofuels now appear to be worse for the climate than oil," said
Friends of the Earth Europe's Sonja Meister.
"The European Commission's failure to act on the many warnings is
shockingly irresponsible," said Corporate Europe Observatory
spokeswoman Nina Holland.
The Belgian steel workers were equally blunt. "You could call this the
first carbon dioxide industrial action," said Fabrice Jacquemart, a
spokesman for the FGTB union. "There is something utterly absurd about
a policy that creates more unemployment in Europe."
The EU announcement came as Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive
officer of Shell Oil, released the startling warning that "the world's
current predicament limits our room to maneuver. We are experiencing a
step-change in the growth rate of energy demand due to rising
population and economic development. After 2015, easily accessible
supplies of oil and gas probably will no longer keep up with demand."
These are the opening shots in what will be a long war, as the world
fails or succeeds over the course of this century in surmounting the
threat of global warming. Barroso claimed these measures would cost
less than $100 billion a year, or about 0.5 percent of the EU's gross
domestic product. As insurance, he claimed, this was cheap at the
price, and the cost of inaction would be many times higher.
That is not the way the media saw it. In Britain, the Daily Mail, the
Daily Telegraph, the Sun, the Daily Express and the Evening Standard
all gave prominence to a report by the Open Europe think tank that the
EU's drive for renewable energy would cost the average family about
$1,500 a year. Others noted the warning from the Greens that the
biofuels policy would make things even worse for the world's poorest
people in the developing world.
Usually sympathetic to the EU and to environmental causes, the
Guardian sniffed that "bits of the plan are disappointing. Why does
the EU insist on wasteful biofuels being used for road transport? It
is hard to see it as anything other than yet another sop to European
farmers."
In Germany, the news magazine Der Spiegel put the headline "A Total
Disaster" on its assessment of the EU's biofuels policy. It reported:
"Paul J. Crutzen, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for chemistry,
estimates that biodiesel produced from rapeseed can result in up to 70
percent more greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels. Corn, the
preferred biofuels crop in the U.S., results in 50 percent more
emissions, Crutzen estimates."
The United States has already warned of the dangers inherent in a
proposal to impose "green tariffs." At last month's meeting in Bali,
Indonesia, that agreed a road map to negotiate the next phase of the
Kyoto protocol against global warming, U.S. Trade Representative Susan
Schwab warned the Europeans that this cold "backfire."
"Restricting imports easily leads to covert protectionism, undermining
both environment and economic standards," she said. "Trade
restrictions that seek to force actions can backfire and lead to
tit-for-tat."
The Americans were not the only ones alarmed. Ujal Singh Bhatia,
India's ambassador to the World Trade Organization, said: "If the
countries imposing such measures invoke GATT provisions to justify
them, the dispute settlement mechanism in (the) WTO would face serious
challenges and create divisions along North-South lines."
While the EU's intentions were evidently high-minded, the result has
been an object lesson in the difficulties the world will face in
agreeing on mechanisms to reduce the threat of global warming.
The EU is not the only body that is mulling this kind of "green
tariff" to force other countries to abide by tough targets to cut
carbon emissions. The U.S. Senate is considering two bills with
similar effect. The bills have strong backing from both the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and from the giant
American Electric power group. The bills are likely to face similar
objections from India and China in the WTO, just as U.S. farm
subsidies for the production of ethanol from corn have aroused growing
opposition from the Green lobbies.
The award of last year's Nobel Peace Prize to former U.S. Vice
President Al Gore and the scientists of the Inter-governmental Panel
on Climate Change symbolized the degree to which there is now a broad
consensus that climate change is a realty, that human activity is a
major cause and that its implications are so dangerous that dramatic
measures will be needed to alleviate its effects. But the reaction to
the EU's proposals showed just how hard and contentious that will be.
--
If you disagree with the theories and dogmas of Marxism or Scientific Socialism
then you are a tool of Capitalist interests. If you disagree with the theories
or dogmas of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming then you are a tool of
Capitalistic interests. Notice a pattern here? -- Captain Compassion
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
"...the whole world, including the United States, including all that
we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark
Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights
of perverted science." -- Sir Winston Churchill
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net