EU Climate Goals: Pure Placebo Politics | The American Spectator

Europe’s economy is buckling under the pressure of climate regulation. Now the European Commission has signaled it may gradually revise its targets.

The industrial math in Germany is unforgiving. Electricity prices for industry are up to 300 percent higher than in the United States. Even France, with its nuclear-backed energy mix, faces double the industrial electricity costs compared to American competitors.

The economic pain is reflected in the data. The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the construction sector in the eurozone — an early indicator of economic sentiment — fell to 45.6 in May. The PMI for manufacturing dropped to 49.5 in June. Any figure below 50 signals contraction.

The consequences are visible everywhere. Industry is pulling back, redirecting capital toward non-EU locations, leaving behind rusting industrial shells reminiscent of America’s Rust Belt.

Unemployment is rising. Social tensions are becoming more visible and further intensified by uncontrolled poverty-driven migration.

Unrealistic Targets

The undeniable cause of this industrial exodus is the European Union’s climate targets. With an impenetrable web of regulations and a destructive CO₂ emissions trading scheme, Brussels aims to make the continent “climate neutral” by 2050 — that is, entirely CO₂-free. By 2040, it wants businesses and consumers to cut emissions by 90 percent compared to 1990 levels.

Granted, if this course is followed, emissions in Europe will fall drastically in the coming decades, largely thanks to deindustrialization. Brussels will score a series of Pyrrhic victories. For context, between €30 and €90 billion in direct investment flows out of Germany every year. That’s a loud vote of no confidence in a policy detached from reality and tethered to an absolutist ideology incapable of processing criticism.

The EU’s climate bureaucracy is playing with fire. A social crisis is brewing — its full scope still unimaginable.

Desperate Signals

Industry’s cries for help are at least reaching Brussels — but the gravity of the crisis is still not grasped. Today, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published excerpts from a draft EU document that, for the first time, acknowledges economic distress.

According to the draft, while the 90 percent reduction target for greenhouse gases by 2040 will remain, member states could offset up to three percent of that target via high-quality, U.N.-certified climate protection projects in non-EU countries starting in 2036.

In theory, EU nations could channel development aid into forest protection or renewable energy projects abroad and count them toward domestic targets. Additionally, the EU is considering integrating long-term CO₂ removals — such as carbon capture and storage — into its emissions trading system, a move aligning with Germany’s preferences.

But this plan isn’t finalized. The European Parliament and the Council must still approve it, and further revisions are likely, especially as several member states — particularly in Eastern Europe — push back against what they see as an unworkable agenda.

Still No Touch of Reality

With these minor concessions, the Commission is attempting to relieve some of the economic pressure. But how exactly investments in carbon projects in the subtropics are supposed to revive industrial job sites in Saxony or the Ruhr Valley remains Brussels’ secret.

Criticism is also coming from top economists. Veronika Grimm, a member of Germany’s Council of Economic Experts, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that technology development and international cooperation — not economic self-sabotage — are crucial in fighting climate change. She also cast doubt on whether Germany’s emissions reductions meaningfully affect the global climate.

In truth, nothing is changing. Serious objections from national capitals are rare. The political fight revolves mostly around who gets what from the EU’s growing pile of subsidies.

What Brussels is offering are cosmetic placebos designed to distract from the reality that it has quietly accepted the decline of Europe’s industrial core. But one thing is certain: bike paths in Paraguay and tree-planting in Ghana won’t save a single factory job in Bavaria.

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