Europe’s laughable Pied Piper act on climate change

Sir, A key cause of the global failure to confront the climate change challenge (“Why the world faces climate chaos”, Martin Wolf, Comment, May 15) is political misleadership, not least in Europe. Ever since Kyoto the EU, in particular, has poured resource and political capital into renewable energy strategies that are utterly futile.The hubristic, sanctimonious assumption that developing economies such as China or India will compromise their economic prospects by following the European lead, Pied Piper style, is laughable (and probably a cause for quiet mirth among those economies). That lead has contributed precisely nothing to reduce the global level of carbon emissions and is crippling the economic competitivity of the EU.

There is no doubt that de-carbonising the world energy sector is theoretically feasible, over time. But, as Mr Wolf suggests, the consequences are not ever going to be socially acceptable, even in the developed world. However, there are things that can and should be done to mitigate this – a reversal of current climate change strategies for a start, and the transfer of investment to research on a major, global scale in new technologies such as carbon capture, large-scale electricity storage, wave and solar power, long-range power transmission. These are for the long term. In the shorter term, natural gas has to be the principal, least bad “bridge” – gas reserves are, with account taken of worldwide shale, to all intents and purposes unlimited.

The environmental lobby, which is hamstringing all original political thinking in Europe, needs to be hobbled – its only achievement to date has been to stimulate the increased use of coal. The most important priority of all must be the speediest possible termination of unconstrained coal-fired power generation – China and India are together commissioning three new plants weekly and even Germany, fresh from its extraordinary decision to cull all nuclear capacity, has more than a dozen new coal-fired plants currently planned or under construction.

 

Fonte: ft.com