L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree

being the maunderings of an Englishman on the Côte d'Azur

09 March 2007 Blog Home : March 2007 : Permalink

Green Gesture Politics

So the EU has, as predicted, signed up for green house gas cuts and increases in "renewable" energy. Not surprisingly Richard at the EU Referendum blog nearly blows a gasket on the idea and the adulatory coverage:

This is a very stupid or ill-advised woman, projecting a strategy which is nothing short of an economic and human disaster. Ambitious it might be. Credible it is not. But all we get from the media is cheer-leading, as this insane policy takes shape.

Fortunately I think this brainfart is going to sink into obscurity in a bit, after all they have given themselves until 2020 to do all this which means that this is yet another target that can be safely ignored for a while. Remind me what happened to the Lisbon declaration/strategy on growth/innovation by the way?

Of course one obvious way to reduce emissions would be to shut down the EU and large chunks of national bureaucracy. Think about how many tonnes of CO2 are emitted by the MEPs jaunts to Strasbourg or by ministerial meetings like the one that has come up with this bright idea. If you held them by videoconference you'd cut quite a chunk of emissions. Needless to say though, there seems to be little hope that, even if the cuts take place, they will effect the politicians and EUrocrats who decreeed them. Eliab found this artcile talking about how the British government has completely failed to cut its own emissions:

The findings showed that the government estate during 2006 was responsible for 806,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, generated 186,400 tonnes of waste, and consumed 25 million cubic-metres of water.

Eleven ministries, including the Department of Transport and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), saw an increase in their carbon emissions compared with the previous 12 months.

Although recycling increased, the overall amount of waste produced increased by about 23,000 tonnes. Nine departments could not provide "proper waste data".

During a year that saw widespread water restrictions across southern England, officials consumed an average of 10.2 cubic metres per person, failing to meet the government imposed target of 7.7 cubic metres.

One suspects that Europe will be even worse.

Of course if it really is necessary to cut emissions (a big if in its own right) then rather than cripple the economy the best way to achieve the goals would be to make us all vegans, although we'd have to make sure we cooked our veggies right so that we didn't fart away the gains - Methane is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. This would probably not be a popular policy though and might cause an increase in skeptical groups looking more closely at the emperor's new clothes scientific research on the subject.


I despise l'Escroc and Vile Pin