SOURCE: Drieu Godefridi via the Gatestone Institute
Photo: Generated by DALL-E <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a preparatory impact report<\/a>, a copy of which has been obtained<\/a> by the Financial Times<\/em> before official release, the European Commission estimates that to achieve the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040 then 100% in 2050 \u2014 the main objective of the “European Green Deal<\/a>” \u2014 Europe will need to invest \u20ac1.5 trillion a year from 2031 to 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1.5 trillion euros a year. That is equivalent to 10% of the Europe Union’s entire GDP for 2022<\/a> — every year! Apart from a war effort, there is no objective of any kind that has ever required the diversion of 10% of a continent’s GDP by political decree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new German utopia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This number shows us that, while Germany has had to give up<\/a> imposing its hatred of nuclear power on its European partners, it is determined to inflict on Europe the rest of the environmental utopia, i.e. total decarbonization, even at the cost of economic collapse and freedom You may say that the European Commission is not Germany, but anyone who has worked in the Commission will tell you that there are two insurmountable lobbies at this level: Germany, by far is the most powerful country in Europe, followed by the environmental NGOs, such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, which have permanent offices in the Berlaymont, the headquarters building of the European Commission. The fact that the current president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is German is just the icing on the apfelstrudel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All the same, everything in this delirious report by the German Commission is wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Commission’s pseudo-savvy calculations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The report states that the cost of inaction would be much higher than \u20ac1.5 trillion a year. In fact, explains the report, the European plan will save<\/em> up to 1% of GDP per year. It should be noted, however, that this figure runs counter to all the IPCC’s projections<\/a> on the cost of global warming \u2014 which is 0.03 % of GDP per year, not 1%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Annex 8 of the impact report just published by the Commission states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The IPCC AR6 Working Group II report (2022) confirms that global aggregate economic impacts generally increase with higher degree of global warming. However, due to the wide range of damage estimates and lack of comparability between methodologies, the report does not provide a robust range of estimates but recognizes that global aggregate economic impacts could be higher than estimated in the previous report.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In short, the IPCC’s sixth report states that the cost of global warming could actually be greater than that stated in the fifth report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately (for lack of time? space? ink?) the Commission does not bother to reiterate what was said in the fifth report, which was voluble and precise on the question of the cost of global warming. Let us make up for this shortcoming: according<\/a> to the fifth IPCC report AR5, chapter 10:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers… Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices… and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Above all, the Paris Agreement, of which the Commission claims to be part, aimed to limit global warming to only 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. Achieving this objective presupposed a drastic global reduction in human greenhouse global<\/em> gas emissions, not just Europe. However, since 2015, these global emissions have continued to rise<\/a>, and there is no realistic scenario in which global emissions will decrease. China, which still builds<\/a> roughly two new coal-power plants a week, and India continue to lay waste to these projections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Climate, of course, is a global issue: if Europe reduces its emissions to zero, while the rest of the world continues to increase them, the effect on the climate will be zero. As a result, the German plan will not save a single euro in terms of the damage caused by global warming and extreme events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, the investment needed each year would not be \u20ac1.5 trillion invested to save 0.03% of GDP per year. It would be \u20ac30 trillion \u2014 \u20ac1.5 trillion per year for 20 years \u2014 invested to change absolutely nothing<\/em> in the climate of Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are no serious analysts<\/a> left who still maintain that the objective of the Paris Agreement will be achieved; the Paris Agreement is obsolete and to pretend otherwise, as the European Commission is doing, is misleading, irresponsible, and not even scientific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, the report goes on to say that reducing European imports of fossil fuels would result in savings of up to \u20ac2.8 trillion between 2031 and 2050. At present there is no technical or scientific way of overcoming the intermittent nature<\/a> of renewable energies such as wind, solar. As a result, Europe’s energy mix will have to continue to rely on fossil fuels in addition to nuclear power, as demonstrated by Germany, the champion of lignite coal and CO2<\/sub> emissions \u2013 and releasing ten times more CO2<\/sub> than France<\/a>, per unit of energy produced — in 2024. What is more, this pseudo-savvy calculation presupposes that we know the prices of oil and gas in advance, and that we persist in banning the exploitation of the shale gas that lies beneath Europe’s soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The report by the European Commission shows a frightening headlong rush. The situation in Europe is already dramatic. Since 2008<\/a>, American GDP has doubled, meaning that Americans earn twice as much as they did in 2008. Since 2008, Europe’s GDP has stagnated. This means that Europeans are increasingly taxed and harassed, and forbidden to move, build, undertake, innovate and start a family as they see fit, while their incomes are not increasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\ns<\/s>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n