East European States Mount Revolt Against Paris Agreement

East European EU states are mounting a behind-the-scenes revolt against the Paris Agreement, blocking key measures needed to deliver the pledge that they signed up to 18 months ago.

Under the climate accord, Europe promised to shave 40{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} off its emissions by 2030, mostly by revising existing climate laws on renewables, energy efficiency and its flagship Emissions Trading System (ETS). But documents seen by Climate Home show that Visegrad countries are trying to gut, block or water down all of these efforts, in a rearguard manoeuvre that mirrors president Donald Trump’s rollback of climate policy in Washington. –Arthur Neslen, Climate Home, 29 May 2017

Steelmakers in Europe have written to EU leaders urging them not to burden the industry with extra carbon emissions costs they say would make them uncompetitive against foreign rivals and raise the risk of job losses and plant closures. Draft reforms to the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) post-2020, agreed in outline by the European Parliament in February, aimed to balance greater cuts in greenhouse gases with protection for energy-intensive industries. The CEOs of 76 steel makers, including Arcelor-Mittal , Germany’s Thyssenkrupp and Austria’s Voestalpine, say the reforms as they stand would add unmanageable costs and mean pollutants were produced by manufacturers in other regions. —Reuters, 29 May 2017

The UK government attempted to get the European Union to water down climate and energy rules when prime minister Theresa May officially triggered Brexit negotiations, according to documents seen by Greenpeace. The intervention, involving a British delegation led by secretary of state for leaving the EU David Davis, could indicate that the government will weaken EU climate rules once they are transposed into UK law, Greenpeace said. —renews, 29 May 2017

The economic merits of the Paris Agreement take on a different air when more fully considered. Climate-change advocates’ bizarre premise is that economic gains will come from restricting access to the most abundant, reliable and affordable fuel sources. Never mind that this defies the experience of many European nations that have invested heavily in renewable energy. After “Germany’s aggressive and reckless expansion of wind and solar,” for example, the magazine Der Spiegel declared in 2013 that electricity had become “a luxury good.” Apparently this time will be different. Some countries have threatened to punish the U.S. if it pulls out of the accord. Countries imposing costs on their own industries through the Paris Agreement complain that they are at a disadvantage if the U.S. doesn’t do the same. Apparently they didn’t receive the talking points describing green energy as an economic boon for everyone involved. –Cliff Forrest, The Wall Street Journal, 30 May 2017

The EU Ministry for The Management of Nice Weather says that the artificial price of carbon credits must rise a magnitude or two if they are going to have any chance of meeting their “climate” target. In some senses they are right — the price of carbon would have to be very high to get people to shift energy sources, because the ones that produce carbon dioxide are so blissfully cheap. On the other hand, this assumes that the IPCC models are right and that economies would survive this brutal management. They don’t seem to mention what this will do to electricity prices. —Jo Nova, 30 May 2017

Introducing their work, McCabe et al. (2017) write that “there is concern that climate change may substantially affect the frequency and duration of drought.” They describe their findings as follows: “For most of the conterminous United States, drought frequency appears to have decreased during the 1901 through 2014 period.” In light of all of the above findings, it would appear that instead of making droughts worse, the global warming/climate change experienced over the past century appears to have ameliorated them. And that finding stands in stark opposition to model-based predictions of future drought, which foresee them getting more frequent and severe as the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere rises. —CO2 Science, 25 May 2017

A recent press statement by the United Kingdom’s Transmission System Operator (TSO) shows that the consumer interest is no longer in the driving seat. The system is now run for the convenience and benefit of electricity producers. Hitherto, forecasters have been concerned with predicting “just how much electricity will be needed”, but with the advent of a renewables dominated grid they are now engaged on forecasting what is about to be produced. The significance of this change cannot be overstated. The consumer has become a secondary consideration; and the producer interest is now the main focus of National Grid’s attention. If the United Kingdom is to flourish, this mistaken inversion of priorities must be addressed by the next government. –John Constable, GWPF Energy, 29 May 2017

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