We’ve been just waiting for the panic over coronavirus to somehow end up involving global warming.
The Guardian finally delivered, courtesy of the ridiculous bureaucrats at the European Union.
Here’s the March 4 headline: “Focus on coronavirus shows need for climate law, says EU official.”
The report explains:
Frans Timmermans, a European commission vice-president who leads on the climate emergency [sic], said the different crises facing Europe underscored the need for a climate law in order not to lose track of reducing emissions.
He’s touting the new EU climate law draft unveiled on March 4, its version of the “Green New Deal,” which will have to be approved by the European Parliament.
It will be a heavier-than-normal lift to obtain the parliament’s rubber stamp because the law mandates that EU carbon dioxide emissions reach net-zero by 2050, a radical goal, and it’s legally binding.
As the Guardian reports:
If an EU member state fails to make progress, the commission can take it to the European court of justice, which has the power to impose hefty daily fines for non-compliance.
Suppose bankrupt Greece isn’t reducing its emissions fast enough to meet the 2050 goal. Then the EU will throw “hefty” fines at it. Because Greece won’t be able to pay — being bankrupt, you know — the rest of the EU (read: Germany) effectively will have to pay.
The proposed law is, therefore, a recipe for disaster that will increasingly rely on Germany to rescue other EU nations.
Back to the headline. What Timmermans is saying is that the European Parliament needs to pass its new climate law in short order so that it can be used to shape everything else.
The draft legislation actually specifies that all subsequent legislation, say, on farming, labor, or coronavirus, will have to be consistent with the 2050 net-zero carbon emissions target.
Meanwhile, the new commission president, Ursula Von der Leyen, flanked by none other than teenage climate alarmist Greta Thunberg, elaborated: The new law “will be our compass for the next 30 years and it will guide us every step.”
Of course, there is no way that any developed economy will emit net-zero carbon dioxide in less than 30 years unless it turns to nuclear power, a path which European nations seem adamantly opposed to.
After all, Germany shut down its perfectly good nuclear reactors because of a one-off disaster in which a tsunami hit a Japanese nuclear plant where the emergency power generator was foolishly located.
This stunning idiocy only led to increased German reliance upon coal-fired electricity, something that will be simply forbidden under the proposed law.
Alas, the EU’s mandated economic suicide still isn’t good enough for Thunberg, who calls it “a surrender” because it doesn’t ensure global temperatures will not rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above early 19th century values, a benchmark that is simply silly.
Global surface temperatures are around one degree above where they were in 1900, and it’s easy to show that a bit less than half of that rise happened before we had put enough carbon dioxide in the air to cause it.
Since 1900, in the developed world, life expectancy has more than doubled.
In the United States, per capita, constant-dollar wealth increased drastically over that same time period. Anyone who thinks that raising the surface temperature a mere half-degree further will wipe out all of this and more is abandoning logic.
In reality, economically vibrant societies are increasingly immune to the vagaries of severe weather events.
As convincingly shown by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Jr., weather damages as a percent of global GDP are going down, not up. Sure, dollar-cost damages are increasing, but only because we have more and more stuff to get hit.
Make no mistake: The proposed EU climate law will reverse a lot more progress and a lot more economic and environmental resilience than any probable climate change or, for that matter, coronavirus.
Read more at Washington Examiner
Welcome to the European(Soviet)Union where your banned from heating your home on cold winter nights all because a bunch of fools got together and wrote us some idiotic treaties that forces their people to give up the use of all fossil fuels all because of Politics and Junk Science
Legally binding and technically feasible are two very distinct things. The fact that the EU passes a bill requiring net-zero on CO2 emissions doesn’t make it feasible from a technical standpoint. Not without totally destroying their economies and killing millions of Europeans in the process.
People will be chopping down trees to burn for heat because they can’t afford the electricity. How green is that?
Ironically, Swedish Arrhenius, who pushed the idea of CO2 warming, said it would be a good thing, help trees to grown and urged the burning of wood fires, as a small temperature rise would be good for cold Sweden. Read “Green Tyrrany”, by Rupert Darwell, superb exploration of the true story f how AGW hysteria came about.
To top it off, anyone who questions their plans is labelled anti-science, denier, dangerous.
The Corona virus has bumped ‘imminent climate catastrophe’ from the headlines. It’s China’s latest gift to civilization. China got a free pass on the Paris Climate Accord and raced full speed ahead with cheap coal power, while Europe puts its citizens in straight jackets. Why do they surrender so easily?
The World Health Organization just made it ” official”, the Chinese corona virus is a pandemic. The IPCC must have lost the argument.
Climate change is now #2.
The New Green Deal should be called what it realy is the New Green Scam
Well, makes sense. I guess. Isn’t Europe where fairies and goblins and other magical folk live? This is just more magical thinking.
Many national and state governments have declared a climate change emergency. Our current pandemic shows us what a real emergency looks like. My family lives at ground zero for the United States but we don’t have it nearly as bad as China, Italy, or Iran. Here public schools are closing some for up to six weeks. Public gatherings of more than 250 are not allowed and smaller gatherings must follow specific rules. The University Of Washington and many other colleges have converted to on line classes. Church attendance is now on line for many. Local stores are sold out of sanitizers and cleaning supplies and some food items are sold out. On the national scale President Trump has just banned travel from Europe. A real emergency shows how stupid it is to say that we have a climate change emergency.
Friends,
The day may come when we shall have to physically assault and kill these people before they destroy our countries.
In a democracy, we can defeat them fairly with a majority of votes. Obama gave voters hints of what the Democrats were up to. The 2016 election put a stop to it.
Bernie Sanders is all-in for the Green New Deal, so the Democrats will defeat the GND themselves.
Sorry, but I can’t explain why my fellow Canadians vote against global warming. Not cold enough for them?
EU is corrupt and hellbent on pursuing absolute power over all of Europe. Most of the nation/state leaders sellout their countries for a chance at personal wealth. There is no upside to “fighting climate change” the process turns productive citizens into serfs slaving to pay high taxes and super high energy prices. Forcing generations of people to endlessly battle nothing but the variable nature of weather is nothing less than criminal.
I recently talked with a friend from Scotland. I thought that Brexit was caused by the open borders policy. He added that Britain was sending money to Brussels without knowing what they would get in return. The EU’s expense account was none of their business.