European are sacrificing themselves for no practical results. All in the name of appearances and what now counts as some perverted political correctness.
Living in London and seeing a visible build up of black dust on my window frames every month or two I'd like cleaner air.
US is a large country with considerable amounts of coal (and oil to a lesser extent). China also owns a considerable amount of coal on their territory. Several African countries are significant oil producers. (overall even if it's oversimplifying: it makes sense that large countries with low density of population have larger amounts of natural resources per capita...)
Since EU imports > 95% of the fossil fuels it uses and since the volume of oil extracted from earth will soon peak and then decline (in a context where the countries who extract it will keep more and more for themselves, therefore even less to be available on the market), it is indeed wise that EU learns to organise with less fossil fuels (independently from any climate/environmental concerns, which are another good reason). If EU doesn't then it will anyway have to face such a decline, without being properly organised...
That's a strong statement. Can you be more specific ? I live in the EU and I have no complaints related to Union-level climate policies.
Electricity is at an all-time high because we spend a huge amount of money making it "green". People can't even heat their houses in the winter. It's literally 13C inside right now at my parents house.
Meanwhile, France is deemed "un-green" because union-level climate policies mark cheap nuclear power as not "green", while Germany is burning biomass and expensive natural gas, therefore is tagged "green".
Union-level climate policies completely at fault here, and so are many government policies that are just an excuse to extract more taxes under the righteousness of "fighting climate change".
I don't know who is getting rich and achieving a better life out of this, but it's certainly not the European common citizen.
- Fuel taxes are national policy, not EU ?
- Electricity was stupid high mainly because of the war ? (and FWIW "green" is not yet king - given that there is still new coal capacity coming online [thanks, Poland] in spite of its utter stupidity)
- Agreed that natural gas policy is kind of all over the place - policy is lagging reality
The EU is not rich in own energy resources, so placing taxes & other restrictions imports keeps cash at home to plow into renewables - improving security of supply.
So I'm still not convinced that the EU has got it willfully wrong.