January 21, 2024 - 8:00am
In hindsight, 2024 may well be remembered as the year of the Great Reversal on EU climate policy. That many of the most ambitious emissions goals will not be achievable has been common knowledge for a while now, but until recently the policies themselves had not been questioned. There was a widespread consensus that the European Union was in position to be a global leader for emissions reductions and the green transition away from fossil fuels.
Now, this consensus is crumbling. Nothing demonstrates this more than the growing gap between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her own party in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP) — which is led by another German, Manfred Weber.
Von der Leyen has been a champion of green policies, including the phasing out of the internal combustion engine (ICE) or nature restoration laws that would limit the use of land for agricultural purposes. Weber, on the other hand, has demanded more support for German farmers and must manage a growing movement within his party (technically an alliance of parties, as one cannot vote directly for the EPP in EU elections) which wants to postpone or reverse the ban of ICE cars.
The changing attitude of the EPP becomes understandable if one looks at the polling. The “populist” Right is surging in the polls, a rise partly down to growing public resistance to climate policies seen as too ambitious. While von der Leyen has the advantage of being an unelected bureaucrat who cannot be deposed by the will of the electorate, her colleagues in the EPP do not have that luxury. Their place in Parliament would be under threat if they were perceived as ignoring voter demands; unsurprisingly, then, the EPP’s stance on emissions reduction at all costs is softening.
The European Right has discovered anger against Net Zero policies as a powerful theme for mobilising disenchanted voters, as demonstrated by farmer protests in countries such as the Netherlands and Germany. A number of parties across the continent, from the Austrian FPÖ to the German AfD and the RN in France, have been quick to make this a main campaign issue.
What was once an issue for left-of-centre parties to win over voters has now become a toxic vote-loser. This shift shouldn’t surprise us: Europeans support taking action on climate change — just so long as it doesn’t affect their lifestyles.
Once it becomes clear that reducing emissions comes at a significant cost, support for corresponding policies falls dramatically. The German example of the last two years has shown that the green transition is not leading to more jobs and prosperity, but instead the opposite. Germany was the worst performing major economy in 2023, and Economy Minister Robert Habeck has announced that this struggle will persist for the foreseeable future. None of this enthuses the electorate, and von der Leyen’s position — closer to that of Habeck than that of Weber — is increasingly viewed as a liability in the battle for votes.
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SubscribeIt’s all to do with politics and nothing to do with reality. The modern equivalent of the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin.
Also the modern version of Lysenkoism. If you’re not familiar with the term, do a quick internet search. It’s fascinating and disturbing.
Green energy is being purchased, just like indulgences.
I don’t think “politics” explains it however. You’d expect “politics” to support cheap energy etc that the people actually want (and is good for the economy). It’s a form of groupthink. The IPCC writes pretty nuanced reports, then they get successively summarised and the most extreme cases taken as predictions, the media get in on the act. And add to that an over reliance on linear one dimensional thinking.
Good! And about time for many people to wake up.
The “plans” for net zero have become mainly a middle class affectation. Nice bit of virtue signaling as long as “my” standard of living isn’t affected directly. Lovely to look proudly on at my EV in the drive (as long as my underpaid cleaner can get to work and my Okado delivery arrives).
So few people were remotely interested in net zero until some people realised they could make lots of money out of it. Selling “The Dream” makes big bucks, but the downside is that European manufacturers can’t compete against China, so the supposed highly skilled “Green” jobs all go abroad.
No thought for food security, no thought for those who can’t afford a heat pump or new EV, no thought for those whose annual treat is a week in the Med. Little sign that the noisiest of the pro Green lot have reduced their consumption, fewer (if any) flights, watching food miles, make do and mend, keeping the smartphone for 5 years etc etc etc………
Hypocrites and thank goodness for a push back. Destroying the economy of the West won’t save the planet!
The “Green” jobs that all go abroad aren’t even, on the whole, green jobs . Blast furnaces in India and China fire up and produce new steel, too be shipped back to blighty. Meanwhile, we shed 3000 jobs and crow about how low our emissions are.
The sooner this house of cards collapses, the better.
Excellent summary of the increasingly obvious Net Zero hypocrisy!
‘The “plans” for net zero have become mainly a middle class affectation. Nice bit of virtue signaling as long as “my” standard of living isn’t affected directly. Lovely to look proudly on at my EV in the drive (as long as my underpaid cleaner can get to work and my Okado delivery arrives).’
Superb! I love your biting sarcasm!
On Fri 1 Aug 2008, Guardian journalist Andrew Simms began a series of articles – “100 months to save the world”.
“Time is fast running out to stop irreversible climate change, a group of global warming experts warns today. We have only 100 months to avoid disaster. Andrew Simms explains why we must act now – and where to begin”
Each month Andrew returned to provide readers with an update on our progress towards the disaster until December 2016 when his last article in the series appeared.
So after 98 months the Guardian informed us that “the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that there are only a dozen or so years in which to change our economies radically if we are to keep the effects of the warming already under way to manageable proportions”.
Not you’ll note ‘to avoid disaster’ but to keep the effects of warming to manageable proportions.
As science and technology has demonstrated that there are solutions to global warming and that the only thing in the way are political issues, is there any reason why in the “dozen or so years” the Guardian said we have available, we should not have resolved the problem, along with many others?
There are literally dozens of examples of the same thing – Prince Charles, Al Gore, AOC. Every failed deadline is memory holed.
It won’t be remembered as a reversal. They’ll just change direction and hope you forget.
Imagine living in the town of Aberavon and surrounding community and learning that Tata Steel is laying off 2,500 of its 3,000 workers because it’s converting to electric blast furnaces. The magnitude of something like this cannot be overstated. The community will be devastated. There will be nothing left – just a bunch of empty stores and people living on govt assistance. And the govt is paying Tata 500 mill pounds to help with the transition. It makes more sense to shut it down and give the each of the 3,000 workers 150,000 pounds. Stupid idea for sure, but better than the alternative.
Hold on – there may well be good purely economic reasons to switch coal-fired to electric blast furnaces. “Net zero” may not be the only or major force driving this decision.
So I do not assume that this decision is necessarily “bad”. The electric furnaces use a lot less labour than the traditional blast furnace. But that’s just the gain we get from automation and more advanced technology – which we have happily adopted in most other industries (it’s a net win for the country as a whole). Is there something so special about the steel industry that it should be protected from change ? The rest of us weren’t.
Yes, it’s a difficult adjustment for Port Talbot. Bu that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the wrong thing to do.
Yes, giving the cash directly to the workers should be considered. It always should when the subsidy per job if over £100K.
Note how the Labour party – amongst others – are completely tied up in knots on this – “yes but can’t possibly update these blast furnaces … no but this new alternative is greener … yes but these jobs are more important than Net Zero … so but we said Net Zero was the most important issue facing us … no but we want coke-fired blast furnaces, but we can’t possibly mine the coal in Cumbria – it’s so much better to import it …”. They are arguing against themselves. Somehow the genius analysts of the media don’t seem to notice …
Let us get it right. Blast furnaces make iron which feeds the steelmaking process and electric arc furnaces make the steel. Port Talbot will stop making iron.
Think of bread. The blast furnaces make the flour and the electric furnaces make the bread. If you start with bad flour you get bad bread.
The electric arc furnaces will use scrap flour, of unknown quality. The bread will be of poorer quality. The output has thereby been downgraded. Most of the scrap comes from China – but not the iron ore which makes the iron. Therefore, we continue the dependence on China. Politically bad.
That’s nonsense – the technical point about the scrap iron. The iron content is already higher than iron ore. And the furnace melts the iron to separate it from the impurities. These were all technically solved problems over 100 years ago.
People who oppose this are also in danger of arguing against recycling.
It is hard to see how you can be in favour of recycling and lowering the environmental damage and pollution and actually oppose recycling …
Besides which, I’m sure we produce enough scrap steel in this country to keep this place busy. Just think of all the perfectly good cars we’re going to have to scrap.
Sorry but you’re just wrong. You can go onto any internet source and look at scrap steel (no such thing as scrap iron) and you will find that 80% comes from Asia, with most of that coming from China. We produce nowhere near enough scrap to feed ourselves.
Last week I stopped a local rag&bone man in the street – he said that scrap prices were rising fast.
The high quality steels like those used in stainless steel and car bodies need a high quality input, with certain elements being controlled. You can’t do that with scrap steel imput. Just down the road from Port Talbot is the Tata Steel (Trostre) plant which is making high quality sheet. Will Trostre be affected by the changes at Port Talbot? I really don’t know – another few hundred jobs there.
My understanding (family friends in the steel business in Pennsylvania) agrees with Caradog’s. It’s the reason the US can’t produce the quality of steel that they did back during WWII. All of the furnaces were switched to the more “efficient” electric-arc type; fed with scrap.
Recycling? You mean shipping waste to SE Asia where it is burned or thrown in the sea instead of employing the cheap and effective landfill process? That ‘recycling’? Oh dear.
Most recycling is also uneconomic nonsense! There are a few exceptions, such as aluminium tins.
China’s revenge on the West. We are replicating the Great Leap Forward.
Biden’s Great Stumble Forward.
This is a fair comment. From what I understand Tata is losing $1 mill per day. The govt is giving it $500 mill to update the plant. If the govt is going to pick winners and losers, it would be better off giving that money to the workers. But the govt shouldn’t pick winners and losers because if sucks at doing it. Hell, it would be better off investing the $500 mill in some sort of market fund and giving the interest to the workers. The question then is why is it not economical to build a new steel making plant? Thr govt is better off addressing this issue.
Someone estimated that the money wasted on public ownership of the midlands motor industry in the 70s and 80s was equivalent to giving every worker whose job was ‘saved’ more than £200k – this at a time when you could buy a big house in the region for £150k.
It is not a stupid idea. See my later comment – the steel produced will be of poorer quality and we will increase our dependence on China.
I did some very rudimentary research CW and from what I could see, recycled steel is no worse than virgin steel. That doesn’t mean it’s not true though. I spent 10 minutes researching it.
Relying on recycled steel creates a whole new set of issues though. You will be subject to recycled steel
supply chains and that’s not ideal for sure. And as far as I can tell, the global demand for new steel is greater than the supply of recycled steel. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of the market. That could change in the future with the development of new construction materials, but it doesn’t appear to be the case now.
You did well to research this and I thank you. The point is that scrap and scrap can be different. Back in the time when the UK was a big fabricator in metals the use of scrap became normal – less energy was involved after all. The scrap was known scrap, scrap from a particular source which was known to be suitable for certain steels. No problem.
But if scrap is a world traded commodity you just don’t have any control – beggars can’t be choosers. So you know that you can make many tonnes of ‘standard’ steel, which doesn’t command high sales prices but you are unsure about higher grades. Maybe, just maybe, you come out of things well at the end. But it is like bread again. The baker buys all of the ingredients from his own, known suppliers – one goes bust and then he has to worry for a while to see if he keeps his quality.
Scrap is what it says. Scrap. It could be anything.
I’ve said it a number of times, net zero will never happen. It’s impossible. The only question is when and how much irreversible damage is caused in the meantime.
Jim, here’s a few questions you should put to the Net Zero fans.
Who’s going to be trusted to make the definitive measurements on Net Zero ? Is there an agreed international standard ?
What is the accuracy of those measurements ?
What happens if we do better than Net Zero ? Is that good or bad ?
What’s the permitted tolerance on Net Zero – are we allowed +/-2% ? +/-5% ? What’s the natural (background environmental ) variation ?
Better still how robust are the models used to calculate climate change and what assumptions are being used.
Models can’t predict a coin flip (2 input variables), so I’m not holding my breath for the accuracy of an infinite number of input variables (global human behaviour).
That’s not a particularly good analogy! There aren’t actually two input variables in coin flipping, but the spin and especially fall are highly influenced by tiny perturbations of the movement of the wrist, fingers. possibly even air currents, initial angle of hitting the ground etc. There are two output states, which because of this (pseudo) randomness which results Heads or Tails occurring 50% of the time.
Climate models are actually pretty good and getting better. Then again real world measurements also show warming. Glaciers are retreating everywhere. We can plainly see this with our own eyes for anyone who visits mountains. CO2 is a greenhouse gas – we’ve known this for 150 years. Despite endless doom mongering and 28 international climate conferences human activity is emitting more CO2 than ever. So that would be a pretty big coincidence, and indeed other possible causes of warming don’t fit the data as well.
We shouldn’t be arguing against Net Zero on these grounds. Instead the costs of Net Zero are enormous and human beings are perfectly able to adapt to a changing climate as Bjorn Lomborg argues so persuasively. Not many Dutch people are drowning because of rising sea levels!, and the numbers dying of flooding even in Bangladesh have greatly decreased.. In fact despite the hysteria, fewer people die in extreme weather events if all kinds than ever.
I should have been more precise with my language. Net zero is theoretically possible – but only if you produce all your power from nuclear energy, which I don’t have a problem with. Unfortunately, no one is even talking about doing this.
What we do know about international standards is that countries in the west are the only ones who actually care about net zero: China, India and the rest of the world may say the right things, but they are investing huge sums in coal plants.
The energy needed to mine the Uranium will continue to increase with time. I’m not certain even nuclear can ever be truly net zero.
Most of the ones I have spoken to just say, ‘what you f’talking about?’ No thought, just parrots repeating sounds.
It’s not measured, it’s calculated.
Peter, there are not well developed, reliable models for the validity of CO2 impact, much less what people hope to accomplish. We should be much more certain about whether the entire CO2 mitigation proposal will have an impact. The AGW models have all failed – all predict much larger T increases than ‘measured’ values.
Only after we pin that down should we try to pursue Net Zero and develop an agreed measure of success.
So the EU is moving far to the right of the UK following our departure? Well I never saw that coming in June 2016.
Meanwhile our businesses get totally hobbled by Climate Marxism, and furthermore the Tories use their 80 seat majority to embrace left-wing totalitarianism in the form of Bidenomics, WEF and WHO. With a full implementation team at the Sir Tony Blair Institute ready and willing to “embed” and take over running our useless institutions.
I am actually starting to feel a tinge of “Bregret”.
Don’t worry, it’ll wear off …
It’s worth remembering that the goal of Net Zero is not only unachievable and technologically, economically and financially insane, but that, even if it could be achieved, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the global or national climate.
Yes agreed. You know that and I know that and the advisors know that – which is why they are crooks.
Why are the advisors – aka climate scientists – crooks? Arguing against Net Zero policies isn’t helped by such conspiratorial stuff
It would certainly make some difference, over time, because we know without any doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas! Yes, I realise that it is also plant food – the two attributes are not contradictory!
The reason why we are trying for NetZero is that politicians don’t actually know anything. They rely on advisors and the latter change their opinions depending on how rich it makes them.
The advisors are crooks. The politicians are just naïve – like little children eager to please the electorate with the latest fads.
… or maybe naive little children trying to please their globalist elite friends …
If Useless von der Leyen is so green, it’s a shame that she had 7 children and lives on a huge estate instead of in a box like the rest of us.
But of course, it was always ‘Do as I say and not as I do ‘ nicht wahr Ursula ?
My concern is that Climate Alarmism will get such a bad reputation over the next decade and the underlying concerns embodied in the science will be disregarded for a few centuries. If human civilization wakes up to climate change again in 2200 as CO2 exceeds 700ppm then it might be too late for an urgent correction.
The next few decades should be pleasant climatically speaking. The world will green up at desert margins, the tree line in Russia and Canada will move north, agricultural production will increase in line with rising CO2 and with luck civilization will flourish as it has done in previous warm periods.
What we need now is climate realism with restated CO2 targets:
Net 100% by 2050 would be an achievement given all the Chinese coal power stations coming online.
Net 75% by 2100
Net 50% by 2150
And Net 20% by 2200
The greener earth biosphere of 2200 should be able to soak up the residual 20% of CO2 emissions in 2200.
I could get behind that. I strongly doubt however that new forms of energy will emerge from top-down edicts. Maybe nuclear could be construed as one that has?
The insistence on massive wind and solar by governments has probably stifled the chances of alternatives emerging for a generation or more.
I agree about top-down edicts failing, look at the mega European nuclear fusion project. It consumes $ billions and for the past 30 years viability has consistently been another 30 years away. More recently they split the project objectives to conceal the fact that even when power generation viability is achieved in 30 years they will then need to engineer a fix for the harder problem which is destruction of the fusion chamber by neutrons.
Whatever happened to the vats of bacterial gloop that synthesized oil under sunlight? This is the type of lateral thinking that will save the world.
If humanity doesn’t have the technology to deal with climate change by 2200, then something must have gone very wrong.
Yes though we are creating the conditions for failure right now.
Disadvantaged people become angry and start wars, then when wars derail people start talking about survivable tactical nuclear exchanges.
Or a brilliant scientist desperate to buy a house or start a family might be tempted to engage in some evil genetic engineering of a virus for an under the counter financial payment.
It is perverse that modelled predictions of some minor climate instability in 80 years have provoked policy changes that ferment the conditions for nuclear or bioweapon Armageddon.
People currently live perfectly successfully in locations that reach 50C in summer and other locations that reach -50C in winter. I think we’re adaptable enough to cope with a couple of degrees of additional warmth.
I agree in general though a 2 degree change relative to now is quite large.
Earth’s biosphere flourishes in higher CO2 and temps. The big concern in such such a climate is melting ice caps.
Geology tells us the ice caps are more resilient that a BBC news crew would have you think. The Greenland icecap can cope with 200 to 2000 years of elevated temperature. We have 200 years to reach net zero, that is a major challenge so let’s not delay.
My concern with the emerging Julia Heartly-Brewer type jihad against climate change science is that a 180 degree cultural u-turn would present a long term danger.
Your schedule is more realistic, IFF reducing CO2 is really necessary. My concern is that we are throwing billions of dollars and scientific expertise at a chimera while a real catastrophe – loss of species – occurs in the background.
The conversion of energy as sun rays pass through CO2 molecules is solid science. More than 18″ of sea level rise would be disruptive for global human society so yes we should want to nudge CO2 ppm back below 450 when able.
Planet earth captures carbon through natural processes. Earths biosphere did this so effectively over 100’s of millions of years there was an approaching danger in geological time that Co2 would fall so low during an ice age it would snuff out life on earth.
That fate has been postponed.
I agree we need to look more broadly at environmental threats. Emulsification of plastics in the oceans is an example.
CO2 levels have certainly varied widely over hundreds of millions of years. They have been vastly higher; it’s only fair to point out that this was for example in the Carboniferous Era with a very different plant and animal life than the ones humans evolved in.
Expecting the earth to support 7 billion happy fulfilled humans requires something of a climatic trapeze wire act.
Some geologists think the earth should now be heading into the next ice age and high CO2 has delayed this process. Conversely others on the extreme climate doubt side of the argument say the earth can deal with much higher CO2 levels as shown in the geological record.
My view is we just need to avoid planet-wide social Armageddon while coasting to near net zero over 200 years. 200 years gets us from the first steam trains to landing a robot rover on Mars. We should be able fix energy generation in that timeframe, as I type this 42% of the UK’s electricity is being provided by wind power.
Mass immigration, net zero and wokery. Three fads that were always abhorrent to the majority of the public but wildly attractive to the upper class. If only the Tories had had the wit to oppose them, they wouldn’t be in the mess they are in now.
It’s all very well to oppose “mass immigration”, but you have to be able to stop people crossing the border to make it work.
Well let’s start with politicians that are actually against mass immigration. We haven’t had any of those yet. But as it happens stopping people crossing the border isn’t so difficult. Illegal entry into Britain should result in a incarceration in a secure holding facility followed by deportation either to your own country or a third country that we pay to take them. If that system is watertight, the invasion will stop.
Just a thought and it’s one been in my mind a few times lately. In a small boat you can in physical terms sail from the top bit of Germany near Denmark to Essex or Suffolk the coast along there in a few hours. The Anglo-Saxons and Jutes did it,as Sutton Hoo proves.
The kids in Swallows and Amazon’s did it in “We didn’t mean to put to Sea”,and in one of Griff Rees Jones books he did it in his small boat with a couple of mates. So why didn’t all the Jews under persecution and threat do it in the 1930s to escape from Hitler. I do know the answer. I do know the complexity of the situation. I know that in the 1930s our Parliament of the day passed numerous laws to impede and obstruct the settling of Jews in this country. The post war retelling of the narrative I grew up with was a rewriting of history to ensure we Brits were on the right side of History. My question is rhetorical. If people can trek,walk,hitch across Asia and Europe enduring much pain and hardship then get on a leaky boat and chance death to wind up on a pebbly beach,how did that not happen in 1933-39. It is so obvious that now it is being,at a high level,allowed to happen,as indeed most people know (but we are not allowed to say). I can’t influence anyone either way. The question just interests me.
Von der Leyen and her ilk will not give up power voluntarily. They will spare no effort to silence, vilify and conceivably lock up any who oppose them.
Europeans support taking action on climate change — just so long as it doesn’t affect their lifestyles.
Yes, they all bought the free lunch arguments of net zero, extinction rebellion, and the Greens. And they still believe in the underlying ‘science’ which is extraordinarily weak.
UK Industry is paying 60-80% higher prices for Electricity than either France or Germany.. And you think Germany has a problem. The Tories should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for their Net Zero Zealotry. But make no mistake Labour would double down on this despite their crocodile tears. Net Zero is the true Religion and their support for their working class, Blue collar workers disappears down the plughole. Devolution has made a mess of the Country and now the Steel Works.
I hope for their own sakes the mass Welsh Labour supporters realise they have been had by their Party of London Centric elites.
Look at the photo of this god awful witch. Notice how her fingers are red with blood? Her victims are in the millions.
This is a truly moronic comment. Provide an argument, not an age old misogynistic trope.
Not to mention that much old housing is entirely unsuitable for heat pumps, and an all electric fleet of cars would be logistically impossible. How and where the hell do you recharge them all? It only just about works now because there are only a small percentage of them.
By the way EV Guy, a video cast from Australia, is brilliant on the huge deficiencies of EVs – worse and more expensive in almost every respect except possibly local air emissions (not the same as CO2!).