Guest essay by Fred F. Mueller –
Perfectly timed to the run-up of the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference that will be held in Paris in November/ December 2015, the European Union has committed itself to apparently decisive steps aimed at sharply reducing the continent’s “climate footprint” in the coming 15 years. By 2030, the EU intends to reduce its CO2 emissions by at least 40 %, to increase the share of “renewable” energy production to 27 % while boosting energy efficiency by 27 %.
The aim of these measures is simple and clear: at a time where even within the Green God’s own country – Germany – parts of the industry start to openly revolt against the burdens of a crippling energy policy, the big spider mom has decided the time is right to perform a castling queen’s side by tricking other big nations – with the main focus on the US and China – to accept massive CO2 reduction objectives defined in a binding UN agreement. This in turn, so the obvious hope, can then be put to use as a carrot helping to impose the “planet-saving” green agenda onto a European populace increasingly unwilling to shoulder the related burdens. In order to achieve this noble goal at UN level, and regardless of the fact that the EU’s own climate change policy increasingly resembles a hero with feet of clay, the big players pulling the strings in the European political web have pulled off a real masterpiece of a dissimulation trick. After putting to use every political lever one has ever heard of, they managed to present to the media and the outside world the illusion of a united EU ready to undertake bold measures in order to fight “climate change”.
We can thus admire a brilliant multistage maneuver: while the tide of protests against “climate policy” restrictions ruining people’s lives by imposing monstrous tariffs on energy is slowly but surely mounting, the Nations gathering at the UN summit are presented with the artificial picture of a EU united behind bold “climate control” measures. And in the years to come, the binding agreements the Paris summit will hopefully adopt can in turn be used to cajole reticent European populations and even whole nations into accepting policies that are diametrically opposed to their basic interests.
In order to recognize the trick, one has to focus on some facts that are carefully left aside in the covering of the event by most mainstream media. First point is that Germany itself is poised to fail drastically in its proclaimed goal of further reducing CO2 emissions. Obtaining reductions had been easy during the first years since taking over the former communist DDR in 1990. This was simply the result of the dismantling of its monstrously inefficient, power-wasting industry, making it very easy to achieve reductions in CO2 emissions. Thus in 1990, the newly reunited nation had a CO2 output of 1024 million tons. But this boost has since dissipated, and while in 2009, the German CO2 output had sunk to 786 million tons, it has since climbed back to reach 834 million tons in 2013. So Germany, the industrial giant of the EU, is itself unable to meet “climate killer” emission limits it tries to impose on others.
Secondly, by resorting to a host of political tricks from blackmailing to bribery, e.g. by granting reluctant eastern European countries such as Poland generous free allocations of CO2 emission certificates, the political drivers behind the current “climate change” policy were able to get their consent to the abovementioned “40-27-27”-package. But this came at a price: the losers of this power battle insisted upon inserting a hidden back door by implementing a mandatory consensus clause for the future. This means that the noble commitments Europe wants all other Nations to adopt can at any time be blocked within the EU itself depending on the will of individual European countries. Nice trap, eh?
So in a nutshell, Europe has set the stage for a political swindle of enormous proportions, aimed at fooling other big powers to adopt “climate-saving” commitments the European countries themselves are in reality neither able nor willing to fulfill themselves. The obvious hope is that big players such as a leading world power with a president known for his penchant for climate-saving policies or a rising Asian giant with huge air pollution problems in its major cities might be lured to swallow this bait, thus paving the way for a big overall consensus of most other nations.
And of course, apart from losers, there will also be beneficiaries: “climate saving” has since long become an industrial size undertaking whose proportions dwarf the revenues of peanut-chasing fools such as international drug cartels, whose members are risking their lives for comparatively small change. And this big money game must go on…
this will be a fascinating time period to look back upon in 50 years. Global jihad is right in our face and the western world is still focused on reducing carbon for something that may happen in 2100. time will tell
The Euro Zone is on the edge of a drop into deflation. “Why?” escapes them. Deflation is where the value of a currency rises, instead of falls (which it does in inflation). Now why is that? The news would lead you to believe it is due to the unwillingness of the Central Bank to print enough money and those nasty Austere Germans. But what causes deflation?
Folks not willing to spend. Lack of demand.
Now what might cause a lack of demand? That seems lost on the 1%. They have never heard of having a fixed amount of money to spend. The rest of us, though, know that we are spending all we have (and in many cases spent more than we had, and are still tapped out). “We” are not ‘buying more’ for the simple reason that we can not. No money. Not going to happen. Too many unemployed and too many only buying what they must and still being a bit short when the ’30s’ roll around… and sometimes even when the month is just a 28…
So having electricity ‘skyrocket’ and forcing folks to ‘decarbonize’ by taking more (paid) transit and buying yet more expensive electricity (to replace the wood or coal or gas stove) just means there is that much LESS left over to buy, oh, I don’t know, maybe cars and shoes and bread… that causes demand to drop…
It will not matter if the ECB prints a few Billion more Euros and gives them to folks who own local banks to loan to folks who don’t need a loan and folks who own car dealers and shoe stores. Unless those Euros end up in the hands of folks who need to spend them, they do NOT stimulate demand. You just end up in what is euphemistically called “Stagflation”. The economy is still stagnant, but with a currency surplus causing money value to shrink. Sure, it isn’t deflation; but it is still broken.
That is the logical box the EU is in (and the USA is rapidly approaching). They have pushed the Keynesian Money Supply lever to the wall. And, thanks to all their OTHER policies, have not gotten any growth juice out of it. Now, puzzled, they wonder “Why?”. Perhaps because things like “necessarily skyrocketing” electricity prices move shoe makers to China and because out of work coal miners can’t buy new shoes anyway. At any price.
See, the basic problem is that there is only so much net improvement in total productivity per year (about 3% in good times with great progress, 1% in times of less R&D and improvement). That’s the total “extra take” available to The Power Elite. Period. Full Stop. But they want more than that (and the simple fact is that those ‘at the top’ have the position to get more than that). This works for a while, until those at the bottom are just too tapped out. But TPTB are none too bright about it, and figure if they got 6% last year, they can get it next year. Reality of a 3% max economic growth rate be damned. So they start to flail around for levers of power to move to “fix it”. ONE of them just MUST work!
But they can’t change reality. Postpone it for a year or three, sure… but “Reality just is. -E.M.Smith” and that reality comes home to roost.
Now Keynesian Policy has great attraction here. Just print up some money and that makes it all better. But just like real heroin, this monetary ‘feel good’ only works for a while; then you need more of it. IFF you used that bit of time for real productivity improvements, you can start a beneficial cycle of virtue that gets real growth going and you can start back up that 3% / year improvement line.
HOWEVER: If you use that “stimulus” so that your friends and cronies get the money and benefit, and it does not go into real productivity improvements; you just wasted about 3 years and all the “juice” that was available from temporarily increasing the velocity of money. But, you see, here’s the hard part: It is NOT easy to identify things that are real productivity improvements. Whole industries try to do this. Some go out of business entirely in the process. At the end of the year (or decade) about 3% is the BEST you can average. Suck that up in hair brained stupidity like windmills, Solindra and Carbon Credits and you end up with net economic shrink, not growth.
Then more of that Keynesian Stimulus just gets you nothing (trending into deflation if low) or stagflation (if large). Since there is NO real increase in goods, services, and “stuff”, there just isn’t any more to share around between all the well connected and Friends Of Da Boss. Any that ends up there had to come from “the little guys” who just have to suck it up and buy less stuff. That, then, results in demand slide and eventually in that deflation / stagflation axis as the productivity trap bites.
FWIW, I think even Keynes knew this. He stated that such ‘stimulus’ could only work in the short term and that in good times money supply had to be shrunk back. Nobody in power pays attention to that part of his work…
At any rate, what must happen in the EU if they follow these productivity reducing policies is a net reduction in production, net reduction in buying power, and net reduction in demand. The only economic choice then is horrific StagFlation, or with anything like a sane stable money supply, Deflation. Either one really really sucks. Essentially the Keynesian Fix has worn off and the junkie can’t get enough to feel high again. It’s either withdrawl symptoms or pay a lot for enough dope to feel a bit better, but still be kind of strung out and getting sicker with each shot. (There’s a well developed Economic theory on this with lots of complicated names and all… but the idea is really that simple and giving it funny names of old Economists doesn’t make it clearer…)
So while TPTB slowly figure out they have all the chips and the other guys can’t cough up any more, the EU will stagnate at best and economically decay most likely. These climate polices can only make it far worse.
Also, FWIW, once things are bad enough, the usual outcome is some kind of war, strife, and social collapse. One hopes that Europe can avoid that this time. (Though the history of European wars makes that doubtful). There’s a reason Economics is called “The Dismal Science”…
BTW, don’t expect your leaders nor your neighbors to choose the path that works. It is uncomfortable and requires discipline. Taking more drugs until you hit bottom is the only path that sells…
http://youtu.be/FW0ksM4jMe8
What a dismal post, rooted in social economic realities. The sad part is that the “war, strife and social collapse” often serves to obscure the causative principles of the collapse, leading to an eventual rinse , wash, and repeat cycle.
Pretty good post. The lack of productivity increase is one of the fundamental problems, and that got me to thinking how productivity can increase anyway.
To my simple mind, looking back through the 20th century, we had productivity increasing by first electrification and automation of production then computerisation, first the mainframes speeding up payroll and stock control tasks, then computers in production lines, then the pc and office suites empowering office workers to greater work output per man hour. You then got internet – email and all the rest. But internet’s been around a while now, and our good friend MS office dates to the millenium, as do all those small scale database applications. Sure, pc power doubles every 2 years or so, but does that double a persons output?
Think about it. The pc may get faster but does that make you enter data faster in your spreadsheet? Of course not. Indeed, I can’t honestly say that my pc responds any faster to my demands now than the one I had 20 years ago. My best guess is that there can’t be any increase in productivity because there haven’t been any significant improvement in the tools that we use.
Yes, I was actually calling EM Smiths post excellent, as the “rooted in realties ” I hope made clear. The dismal was a play on the “dismal science” of economics, and the sad realties of our current economic condition.
[Thank you for the note. .mod]
Reblogged this on CraigM350 and commented:
Good summary of the current EU shenanigans
It’s a political scheme of pressure and hidden moves, but China and the US aren’t fooled. In fact, the party in power in the US is on board with the scheme and issues its own misinformation and schemes. They’re just hoping to show Chinese rulers some potential benefits to their rule and fool enough people into going along for “the good of the planet.”
EU becomes the European Soviet Union.
So becoming.
Left theft, but don’t worry, they always run out of other peoples money sooner or later.