A smart sociologist once noted that every nation has a metaphorical mass movement that captures its mentalite — for Americans, it is the trek into the frontier; for the French, storming the Bastille; for Chinese Communists, the Long March; for the Jews, wandering in the desert.
And for the European Union? – A few dozen well-dressed politicians and technocrats, huddled in a conference room drafting rules, regulations, and “directives” for their fellow citizens. It is a non-stop process. Long-time readers of The Financial Times know there is always at least one urgent negotiation under way in Brussels — crafting the Maastricht Treaty, drafting the EU Constitution, deciding whether to admit new members, launching the Euro, or formulating the “20/20/20 directive” to address climate change. In the words of Bjorn Lomborg, 20/20/20 “aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 (and ensure 20 per cent renewable energy).”
And now Eurocrats have spent three years arguing about how to contain the Euro-crisis they set in train by creating a single currency for 17 economies that have separate and distinctive labor markets, fiscal policies, and banking systems. This colossal blunder has obscured the costly failure of Europe’s climate change policy, which was nicely delineated by Dieter Helm in a recent New York Times article. Unlike your scribe, Mr. Helm, a professor of energy policy at Oxford University, is not a benighted climate change skeptic; on the contrary, he fervently believes in “putting a price on carbon” to save the planet.
So why does Mr. Helm believe Europe’s carbon policy has failed? For reasons that, frankly, could have been foreseen years ago. Europe has invested heavily in expensive “renewable” power such as wind and solar, but this has had a negligible impact on global greenhouse gas emissions because A) the high cost of energy has chased energy-intensive industries to China and other coal-based economies, B) any small emission reduction achieved in Europe has been overwhelmed by massive emission increases in China. Europe fancied itself a “leader” on global climate change, but no one followed. European pain has produced trivial global gain. The resulting “lack of competitiveness” has exacerbated the Euro-crisis we read about every day. (California is in the process of making the same mistakes.)
But it gets worse for Europe’s greenies. While they were “doing the right thing” to lead on global climate change and failing miserably, across the pond in the U.S. greedy capitalists who refused to ratify the Kyoto Treaty were doing something that actually managed to both A) reduce carbon emissions and B) strengthen the U.S. economy and raise living standards. Using fracking technology, U.S. energy companies produced vast quantities of natural gas, which is much “cleaner” than coal (if you consider CO2 a pollutant). In the U.S., Mr. Helm notes, emissions “are falling faster than Europe’s.” No thanks to America’s enviro-gentry. Tom Friedman’s 2008 book on energy policy, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, does not even mention fracking.
Europe’s misadventures in both economic policy and “climate science” illustrate the stark limitations of top-down planning by elites, be they in Brussels, Washington, Moscow or Beijing. Self-admiring progressives like Paul Krugman love to contrast their brainy, empirical, coolly analytical approach to policy issues with that of Republicans who are “fundamentally hostile to the very idea of objective inquiry.” But it was Democrats who wanted to follow Europe’s disastrous energy policy. What is more “irrational” — believing the world was created in seven days, or believing that China, which is building a new coal-fired power plant every week, would “follow our lead” if the U.S. foolishly spent trillions on renewable energy? The Chinese are not that dumb; they know wind and solar cannot come close to meeting the energy needs of an advanced industrial economy. Come to think of it, so does Uncle Sam; the EIA forecasts that in 2035 only around 5% of U.S. electricity will be generated from wind and solar.*
*Energy Information Agency, Annual Energy Outlook 2012 (June 2012), Table 25. The EIA estimates total electricity generation plus imports of 5004 billion kilowatt hours, of which 780 or 15.6% are “hydroelectric/other.” The 5% figure assumes that a third of this 780 is wind and solar, which may be generous given that the category is broad and includes “conventional hydroelectric, pumped storage, geothermal, wood, wood waste, municipal waste, other biomass, solar and wind power, batteries, chemicals, hydrogen, pitch, purchased steam, sulfur, petroleum coke, and miscellaneous technologies.” These sources seem to be listed in order of importance, and “solar and wind” only rank eighth.
Copyright Thomas Doerflinger. All Rights Reserved.
